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EGYPT 



BOOKS BY MISS SINGLETON 



Turrets, Towers, and Temples. Great Buildings of the 

World Described by Great Writers. 
Great Pictures. Described by Great Writers. 
Wonders of Nature. Described by Great Writers. 
Romantic Castles and Palaces. Described by Great 

Writers. 
Famous Paintings. Described by Great Writers. 
Historic Buildings. Described by Great Writers. 
Famous Women. Described by Great Writers. 
Great Portraits. Described by Great Writers. 
Historic Buildings of America. Described by Great 

Writers. 
Historic Landmarks of America. Described by Great 

Writers. 
Great Rivers of the World. Described by Great 

Writers. 
Famous Cathedrals. Described by Great Writers. 
Famous Sculpture. Described by Great Writers. 
Holland. Described by Great Writers. 
Paris. Described by Great Writers. 
London. Described by Great Writers. 
Russia. Described by Great Writers. 
Japan. Described by Great Writers, 
Venice. Described by Great Writers. 
Rome. Described by Great Writers. 
Germany. Described by Great Writers. 
Switzerland. Described by Great Writers. 
Turkey and the Balkan States. Described by Great 

Writers. 
Florence. 

Love in Literature and Art. 
The Golden Rod Fairy Book. 
The Wild Flower Fairy Book. 

Dutch New York. Manners and Customs of New Am- 
sterdam in the Seventeenth Century. 
A Guide to the Opera. 
A Guide to Modern Opera. 
How to Visit the Great Picture Galleries. 




THE NILE NEAR CAIRO 



EGYPT 

As Described by 
Great Writers 



Collected and Edited by 

ESTHER SINGLETON 

Author of "Turrets, lowers and Temples," 

"Great Pictures," and "A Guide to the 

Opera," and translator of ''''^he Music 

Dramas of Richard Wagner" 



WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 




'^tva^ fork 

Dodd, Mead and Company 

I 9 I I 



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Copyright, 1 9 1 1 , by 
DoDD, Mead & Company 
Published, September, igji 



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ICLA300313 




PREFACE 

O country is more fascinating to both student and 
traveller than the land of the Pyramids, the 
Sphinx and the Nile j the land of tombs, temples 
and ruins of ancient towns ; the land of feathery palm-trees, 
lovely colours and jewelled skies. The subject is so vast 
and varied and the instructive and delightful books upon it 
so numerous, that the task of presenting even a general view 
of some of the most celebrated towns and phases of con- 
temporary life is formidable, particularly when space is 
limited. 

When Aladdin entered the garden of gems, in which all 
the trees glittered with clusters of jewels, he could only 
bring away a few specimens. I have been similarly em- 
barrassed in making my selection from the golden treasury 
of literature upon this romantic country. I have only been 
able to collect and present here from the innumerable works 
by travellers and Orientalists, their impressions and de- 
scriptions of some of the monuments of the past, the most 
striking features of the scenery and some accounts of the 
various races that constitute the present population. 

I have followed the plan of the companion volumes in 
this series of Holland^ 'Japan^ Russia, Switzerland, etc., but 
the difficulty was increased by the fact that there are two 

V 



vi PREFACE 

Egypts — the historical land of the Pharaohs lying in the 
Nile Valley and the deserts ; and modern Egypt — the em- 
pire of the Khedive, which his grandfather, Ismail Pasha, 
so aptly said was no longer a part of Africa, but belonged 
to Europe. In this Egypt of the Twentieth Century there 
are hotels to please the most fastidious Americans and 
Europeans ; fifteen hundred miles of railways with trains 
fitted with all the luxuries known to the present agej and 
automobiles and electric trains to the Pyramids. 

Side by side with the Cairo of the Arabian Nights is 
fashionable Cairo, with its crowded streets, large hotels, 
fine shops, Khedivial Sporting Club, Opera House, gardens 
and theatres, while not far away the mysterious forms of the 
Pyramids and the Sphinx mock the centuries with their 
changing races and customs. 

I can only hope that my endeavour to bring some of 
these varied scenes and phases of life together will, in some 
measure, give the untravelled a glimpse into Egypt Old and 
Egypt New, and pleasantly recall to the tourist some happy 
hours dreamed away in this mystic land. 

E. S. 

New York, September , zgii. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 
The Country and the Race 

The Land of Egypt .... 

Stanley Lane-Poole 

Ancient Divisions of Egypt 

Sir I. Gardner Wilkinson 

Origin of the Ancient Egyptians 
Villiers Stuart 

The Modern Egyptians 

Dr. G. Schweinfurth 

The Fellahin and Daily Life . 

Stanley Lane-Poole 

The Copts ...... 

Dr. C. B. Klunzinger 

The Moslem Women .... 
Edward William Lane 

Women and the Interior of the House 
Dr. C. B. Klunzinger 

Common Usages of Society 

Edward William Lane 

The Revels of Islam .... 
Stanley Lane- Poole 

PART II 

Descriptions 
Alexandria to Cairo .... 
ji. B. De Guerville 



PAGE 
I 

i8 

27 

31 

41 
54 
61 

64 
76 
83 



95 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



The Nile Fens . 

D. G. Hogarth 

Port Said ; the Suez Canal ; Suez ; an 
MAILIA .... 
Villiers Stuart 

Cairo and its Pleasures 

^. B. De Guerville 

Mosques of Cairo 

Sir I. Gardner Wilkinson 

Tombs ..... 
Sir G. Masp'ero 

The Pyramids 

PV. J. Loftie 

The Pyramids of Gizeh and the Sphinx 

Amelia B. Edwards 

Temples ... . . 

Sir G. Maspero 

Sakkara and Memphis 

Amelia B. Edwards 

The Fayoum . . . 

Laurence OUphant 

The Labyrinth and Lake Mceris 
Laurence OUphant 

The Tombs of Beni-Hassan 
W. J. Loftie 

Abydos .... 

Auguste Mariette Bey 

Thebes and Karnak . 

Amelia B. Edwards 

Memnonium or Ramesseum 

Sir L Gardner IVilkinson 

The Two Colossi 

Sir L Gardner Wilkinson 



D Is- 



CONTENTS 


ix 


The Two Colossi 

Dean Stanley 


251 


Deir-el-Bahari 

Augnste Mariette Bey 


255 


Tombs of the Kings 

Dean Stanley 


260 


Royal Mummies 

J. B. De Guerville 


266 


The Dahabeah • • 

Frederic Eden 


273 


The Nile in the Delta; Heliopolis; the Nile 
Valley ; the First Cataract ; PHiLiE 

Dean Stanley 


278 


Nile Scenes .....•• 
Frederic Eden 


289 


The Assouan Dam ...... 

Frank Fayant 


302 


Nubian Sketches . . . . 
Frederic Eden 


311 


Abou-Simbel 

Sir I. Gardner Wilkinson 


321 


Abou-Simbel and the Second Cataract 
Villiers Stuart 


325 


A Ride Through the Desert .... 
Dr. C. B. Klunzinger 


331 


The Convent of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai 


339 



Dean Stanley 



PART III 

Chronological Summary 
Statistics 



347 
350 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Nile near Cairo 

The Pyramids from Gizeh 

The Delta Barrage 

Gizeh during the Inundation 

First Cataract 

Step Pyramid of Sakkara 

Donkeys and Donkey Boys of Cairo 

Portable Restaurant of Cairo 

Labourers 

Helouan 

Palm-trees and Native Women 

Interior of a Cairene Dwelling 

Arab Cafe in Cairo 

The Turkish Bazaar, Khan Khalil, Cairo 

Alexandria ..... 

Mahmoudieh Canal, Alexandria 

Port Sai'd 

Cairo ...... 

Water-sellers, Cairo 
Kasr-el-Nil Bridge, Cairo 
Ibn-Touloun Mosque 

Pulpit and Sanctuary of the Mosque El 
Moulaiyad .... 
xi 



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ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Great Sphinx 

The Great Pyramid and Sphinx 

Climbing the Great Pyramid . 

Portico, Dendera . 

Portico, Edfou 

Pylon of the Temple of Isis, Philae 

Bedrechein .... 

Medinet-el-Fayoum 

Temple of Seti, Abydos 

Landing-place, Luxor 

Karnak .... 

The Colossi .... 

Portico, Luxor 

The Nile at Boulac 

Fishing-boats on an arm of the Nile 

Assouan .... 

Island of Philas 

Assiout .... 

The Nile near Cairo 

The Assouan Dam 

A Sakia, Nubia 

Rameses the Great at Abou Simbel 

Second Cataract . 

Halt in the Desert 

Citadel Gate, Cairo 

The Khedive . . • 



J 



Facing page 148 

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« « 164*^ 

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286 

290" 

298^ 

302 •' 
312- 

3'; 2 
326 
332 
348 
350- 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 

STANLEY LANE- POOLE 

EGYPT is a dominion and a country, the empire of 
the Khedive and the lower valley of the Nile. 
Egyptian rule now extends over a great portion of 
central Africa to within two degrees of the Equator, and 
comprehends a long reach of both the Red Sea coasts, in- 
cluding the Peninsula of Sinai. In this wide sense Egypt 
means not merely the historical land of the Pharaohs — the 
Nile valley and the deserts which bound it — but also the 
wide-spreading provinces of Nubia and the Sudan, Don- 
gola and Berber, Khartoum Senn'ar, Kurdufan, Bahr-el- 
Abyad, and the four districts of Dar-Fur; the Somali 
country south of Abyssinia from Harar to the Indian 
Ocean ; the equatorial regions beyond Gondokoro to the 
Victoria and Albert Lakes ; the African coast of the Red 
Sea from the Gulf of Aden to Suez, and even the east side 
of the Gulf of El'-Akabah — altogether about a million and 
a half square miles. But a great part of this immense ter- 
ritory consists in waste tracts, profitable for nothing, trav- 
ersed only by the wandering Bedawis and the caravans of 
the traders of the heart of Africa ; wide stretches of desert 
have never even been explored ; and very little is known 
of the inhabitants of the southern provinces beyond the 



2 EGYPT 

fact that they acknowledge in one sense or another the au- 
thority of the Khedive and contribute to the trade of his 
dominions. Here their connection with Egypt ends. In 
race, in language, in character, in everything but a com- 
mon subjection, they are wholly distinct from the true 
Egyptians. To-day, as seven thousand years ago, the true 
Egypt, as defined by the natural boundaries of land and 
race, is the valley of the Nile, from the First Cataract to 
the Mediterranean. Thus limited it dwindles from the 
dimensions of Europe without Russia to half the size of 
Ireland. Nevertheless this was the land of the Pharaohs 
and the Ptolemies ; in this narrow Nile valley those monu- 
ments were built, those inscriptions written, that religion 
and philosophy developed, whereby Egypt gave the impetus 
and direction to much of the art and science of Europe. 
This valley of the Nile, sharply defined by the deserts 
which hem it in, is the Egypt of history, of ethnology, of 
geology ; and with this alone is our present concern. 

In every book that was ever written on this subject the 
saying of — from an Egyptian point of view — a com- 
paratively modern historian, the Greek Herodotus, has 
been quoted — that Egypt is " the gift of the Nile " ; but it 
is so true a word that it cannot be too often repeated. 
Without the Nile there would be no Egypt ; the great 
African Sahara would spread uninterruptedly to the Red 
Sea. Egypt is simply a groove worn by the Nile in the 
desert, and made habitable by its waters. The irregular 
table-land gradually rising from the Libyan plateau to its 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 3 

highest point near the Red Sea can support no life. The 
Egyptian desert is not, indeed, the expanse of shifting sand 
— the summer snow-drift — which it is often imagined to 
be, but it is not the less sterile and uninhabitable. It is 
generally a high plateau of hard, dry, barren rock, covered 
here and there with gravel and sand and debris ; raised some- 
times in heights, sometimes depressed into valleys, where 
water rarely runs and never rests j relieved at wide intervals 
by deep hollows, where springs rise and form a green oasis 
— a dimple in the stern face of the desert. The Nile is the 
life-giving power here, for the water which finds its way to 
the deep down surface of the oases has filtered through 
under the sandstone from the river hundreds of miles away. 
But the greatest creation of the Nile — a sort of long oasis 
worn in the rock by the ever-flowing stream, and made 
green and fertile by its waters — is the land of Egypt itself. 

The great river of Egypt has been traced to the equatorial 
lake Victoria Nyanza, whence it flows under the name of 
Somerset River into the Albert Nyanza, and thence issuing 
as the Bahr-el-Gebel, receives the great tributaries of the 
Bahr-el-Ghazal on the left and the lesser Sobat on the right, 
and flowing through the vast grassy plains of the Sudan 
with a clear, silvery flood, which gives it the name of the 
White Nile (Bahr-el-Abyad), reaches Khartoum, where its 
character is entirely changed by its junction with the Blue 
Nile (Bahr-el-Azrak), — the true Nile so far as the fertiliza- 
tion of Egypt is concerned — an impetuous torrent of the 
Abyssinian mountains, whose waters are heavily laden with 



4 EGYPT 

the dark alluvial soil it has washed down in its headlong rush 
in the season of tropical rains and whose turbid vehemence 
overcomes the calm clearness of the White Nile despite 
its superior volume, and gives the united stream the reddish- 
brown colour and peculiar taste that characterize the river 
henceforward down to its mouth. The waters thus joined, 
and still further swelled by the stream of the Atbara, on 
the right, — the sole tributary of the united Nile, — burst 
through the transverse barriers of the Nubian rocks in a 
series of rapids, and surmounting the last obstacle, the 
primitive granite of the First Cataract, a little north of the 
Tropic of Cancer, pursue a swift winding course through 
the groove they have worn in the desert, until a little below 
Cairo they branch out into a fan-like embouchure and fall 
into the Mediterranean by two mouths after a course of 
3,300 miles, extending over more than thirty degrees of 
latitude — a length exceeded by the Amazon alone of all 
the rivers of the world. Every day during " high Nile " 
the two mouths pour more than seven hundred thousand 
million cubic metres of water into the Mediterranean Sea. 

In its passage through the Nubian rocks, the Nile opens 
out but a very narrow valley, sometimes less than five miles 
across and the alluvial deposit which it brings down from 
the Abyssinian mountains is laid in too narrow a strip, and 
is too little assisted by canals and other artificial expedients 
for irrigation, to form a rich or populous country ; but 
when the river has forced its way through the last cross- 
barrier of syenite and granite which forms the southern 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 5 

boundary of Egypt at Assouan, it enters the sandy sea-bot- 
tom of an ancient estuary and pursues an easy, unobstructed 
course thence to the Mediterranean. The stream about 
half a mile broad in most places, stripes a valley generally 
about ten miles across, sometimes dividing it into two equal 
plains, but more often running close under the eastern hills, 
and spreading over the vi^estern plain in its autumnal inun- 
dation that famous Nile mud which is the one reason that 
the most fertile country in the world is not as barren as the 
deserts that bound it. This alluvial deposit is of varying 
depth, but the average may be put at thirty-five feet at the 
river bank — rising high above the stream at low water and 
thinning away to a few inches' depth at the margin of the 
desert. 

The soil produced by the accumulation of the alluvial 
deposit does not cover the whole of the valley. The Nile 
mud is guided and assisted by canals and pumps, but it 
never exceeds ten miles in breadth (except in the Delta), 
and there is generally a stretch of barren rocky land before 
the actual mountain edges of the enclosing deserts are 
reached. The valley of the Nile is thus composed of a 
series of parallel stripes of different colours. In the centre 
the dull green river, turning reddish when swollen by the 
rains of the inundation ; higher up on either side, but 
chiefly on the western, the bright green fields of waving 
corn, or beans, or lupin ; then a border, still higher, of 
dusky, barren rock ; and then the slopes of the deserts, — ■ 
the long red and yellow and gray ridges of sand — and lime- 



6 . EGYPT 

stone rock, generally low and tame in outline, and lying 
some distance back from the river, but sometimes closing 
even to the very bank in bold headlands, scored by torrent 
beds where water rarely flows, and then shearing away to 
the distance of several miles and leaving a wide level plain 
of cultivable land. 

Throughout the whole length of the ranges which hem 
in the Nile valley, from the syenite and granite cliffs of the 
cataract with beautiful red felspar crystals laid bare by the 
river-wash, and the Nubian sandstone whose tender tints 
of red and yellow contrast so exquisitely with the clear blue 
of the tropical sky from Assouan to Edfou, and from which 
was quarried the stone of the great temples of Egypt — 
down the long undulating lines of nummulite limestone, the 
hard gray rock full of fossils out of which the Pyramids 
were built, to Mount Mukattam, close to Cairo, the last 
spur of the Arabian hills as they trend away to overshadow 
with their jasper hues the head of the Gulf of Suez — the 
hills are absolutely naked and barren, without trace of vege- 
tation. Their bare sides shut in the horizon wherever you 
look, and if you climb their slopes there is only a vast un- 
even desert of the same complexion stretching away beyond 
reach of eye in every direction. The hills which mark the 
edge of the desert and flank the valley are generally about 
300 feet high, and smooth as the South Downs of Sussex ; 
but near Thebes they reach a height of 1,200 feet, and as- 
sume a bolder outline ; and in the heart of the mountain 
system in the eastern desert the elevation of 6,600 feet is 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 7 

attained by Gebel Gharib, and Sinai's rugged and lofty clus- 
ter is a part of the same formation. 

On this side the monotonous character of the desert is 
varied by the bold outline of the primitive rocks which here 
burst through the surface. Gebel Gharib is of granite and 
from Gebel Dukhan was brought the beautiful red porphyry 
which Egyptian sculptors used to prize ; slates and other 
crystalline rocks, the diorite and verde antique of the Saite 
artists, were found among the eastern hills, and so late as 
the present century alabaster was quarried by Mohammed 
Aly from the mountains near Assiout for the columns of his 
mosque in the citadel. Mines used to be worked for silver, 
gold, copper and emeralds ; but now a little lead glance is all 
that is found. The primitive rocks disappear as the Red 
Sea is approached, and the long ridges of limestone again 
become the principal geological feature : but the presence 
of the former gives the Arabian desert an impressive gran- 
deur which is entirely wariting on the west of the Nile. 
Moreover, the Arabian desert is not altogether barren. 
The height of its mountains and the neighbourhood of the 
Abyssinian rains support a certain number of torrents whose 
channels score the hills in every direction, and during part 
of the year — from January to April before the sun burns 
them up — green herbs and bushes are to be seen. The 
Libyan or Western desert, on the other hand, is both tame 
and utterly barren. The Arabian mountains are the break- 
ing up of a plateau ; the Libyan desert is the plateau it- 
self — a vast monotonous, stony table-land of gritty lime- 



8 EGYPT 

stone, 700 to 1,000 feet above the sea-level, unvi^atered, un- 
varied, save by the fevi^ oases which redeem it from utter 
sterility. West, again, of the oases nothing is seen but the 
Great African Desert, covered vi^ith shifting sand, which 
ranges itself in low sand hills and rolls upon the traveller 
in the stifling samum (simoom) or waltzes across his path 
in sand columns seven or eight hundred feet high. 

Except in the lower parts of the Delta, where the in- 
fluence of the Mediterranean rains and the large expanse 
of nearly stagnant water in the salt marshes exposed to the 
eff'ects of a powerful sun induces an unhealthy dampness in 
the air, the climate of Egypt is singularly fine. The regu- 
lating and absorptive power of the immense desert tracts 
surrounding it gives to the Nile valley the most equable 
and dryest climate in the world, in spite of the large extent 
of land which is kept in a sodden state by the inundation 
for a great part of the year. No air is so clear and invigor- 
ating as the breath of the desert borders of Upper Egypt, 
laden with the salt of the limestone surface, and cool as 
though there were no burning sun nor yet more burning 
sand above and underneath. Rain falls a few times in the 
year at Cairo, but in the upper country it is a very rare 
phenomenon, and it is possible to find people who have 
never seen a shower ; sometimes the extreme fringe of the 
tropical rains reaches Upper Egypt and stray showers be- 
come commoner in Nubia. The Libyan desert never gets 
rain at all ; whatever moisture comes to it is brought by the 
northerly wind, and when the wind is in other quarters even' 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 9 

dew fails it. In the Arabian desert on the contrary, there 
is generally at least one heavy storm in the winter, with 
thunder and lightning and great hail-stones ; before whose 
violence the mud villages of the Bedawis melt like sugar, 
and the open spaces become lagunes ; torrents pour down 
from the watershed which runs along the summit of the 
range into the Nile valley on the west (where they do more 
harm than good, since Nile agriculture resents irregular ir- 
rigation), and towards the Red Sea on the east, commonly 
becoming lost in the sand on the way; and a few streams 
are held in the natural reservoirs of the hills and spring up 
here and there in brackish wells. 

In the Egyptian climate everything proceeds with precise 
regularity. The year is divided into two distinct and 
scarcely varying seasons by the periodical rise and overflow 
of the Nile, which begins to swell at the end of June, at- 
tains the greatest height (a rise of thirty-six feet at Thebes) 
at the end of September (or about the equinox) and grad- 
ually falls during the other nine months, losing half its 
height in January, and receding more slowly afterwards. 
From July to February the river is more or less high ; from 
February to the end of June, it is low. 

In precisely the same regular manner the Nile valley is 
subject to alternating periods of winds : from the rise of 
the river to its return to its banks, June to February, cool 
northerly winds prevail, the Etesian breezes that in ancient 
as well as modern days helped the traveller's boat up the 
long river; whilst from February to June, during the low 



lo EGYPT 

Nile, the wind is generally southerly, rising sometimes to a 
hurricane (samum) or collecting in vast pillars of revolving 
sand (zoba'ahs) which menace the safety of the river craft. 
During March and April for three days at a time the cele- 
brated wind blows called the "Fifties" (Khamasin) because 
it usually comes during the fifty days which precede Pente- 
cost. It is the one plague which the beneficent desert has 
inflicted on the Egyptian climate, and it is a severe one. 
Its hot parching breath, laden with minute sand and dust 
particles suffocates man and beast, penetrates every crevice 
in boat and baggage, clogs the works of watches, and per- 
meates everything so eff^ectually that the Khamasin dust has 
usually to be shaken out of portmanteaux when they are 
unpacked in England. 

The temperature, like the wind, follows the Nile. From 
low Nile in April up to the beginning of the swell the 
thermometer gradually rises till it reaches about 109° Fahr- 
enheit in the shade in Upper Egypt, and 95° in the Delta. 
The temperature then cools under the influence of northerly 
winds and a rising river till in the winter (December to 
February) the thermometer stands at about 40° in Upper 
and 35° in Lower Egypt. Actual freezing is rare, except 
in the desert, where the temperature sometimes falls very 
low, and on the Nile during the two hours before sunrise, 
the coldest time of the day, when rapid evaporation is apt 
to produce a thin coating of ice on the surface of pools and 
basins. At the same hours, slight morning mists are occa- 
sionally noticed, speedily to be dispelled by the sun ; and 




THE DELTA BARRAGE 



THE LAND OF EGYPT ii 

after sunset a similar phenomenon is observed during the 
cooling of the soil ; but it is very short-lived, and the 
southern stars are soon shining lustrously in the dark 
canopy of night. The lower the Nile is descended, the 
more frequent become the mists and the harder of endur- 
ance the heat. Above Thebes or in Nubia the air is so 
dry that the moisture of the skin evaporates almost as soon 
as it is formed ; and the intense heat of the desert is con- 
sequently less intolerable than has been supposed, and 
sketches have been pleasantly pencilled in the sun with 
the thermometer bursting at 140°. But further north in 
Alexandria, where the summer is much cooler, the heat is 
less bearable on account of the dampness of the air of the 
Delta. 

The most striking peculiarity about the vegetation of the 
Nile valley is the entire absence of woods and forests. 
Except the familiar palm-groves it is rare to see a cluster 
of trees ; nor are solitary trees to be met with growing wild 
on the banks of the Nile, though of late years an immense 
number have been planted and artificial avenues and plan- 
tations have been added to the green things of Egypt. 
The date-palm is the commonest and most beautiful of the 
trees of Egypt, but its beauty is partly artificial. In its 
wild state its branches grow down to the ground, and wear 
a ragged look and the tree itself is stunted. The graceful 
clustered head and tall bare trunk is the effect of annual 
pruning, and grace and fruitfulness are thus secured at the 
expense of shade, for the trunk is too slender and the head 



12 EGYPT 

too far ofF and too transparent to afford any protection 
against the sun. In the Thebaid, however, a different and 
very beautiful kind, the dom-palm, appears, growing in a 
series of bifurcations which lend a singularly picturesque 
aspect to the banks. Sycamores and acacias grow in the 
desert valleys and give shade to the Nile villages; bushes 
of tamarisk and the weeping willow grow on the mud- 
banks J rarer trees are the myrtle, elm, cypress ; the mul- 
berry is a special feature of Lower Egypt. Besides the 
date-palm, in whose fruit there are endless varieties and 
points for native connoisseurship (which usually gives the 
preference to the dates of the Oases and Nubia), the vine 
flourishes in Egypt, somewhat uselessly, as the Moslems 
are only permitted to taste the juice of the grape unfer- 
mented ; figs, pomegranates, oranges and lemons abound; 
apricots, peaches and plums are common but tasteless; 
Indian figs or prickly pears, and bananas — believed to be 
the fruit of Paradise — have been naturalized ; and the re- 
freshing water-melon and its kindred are at once the 
meat and the drink of the people in the hot days. In 
the gardens roses are the prevailing flowers ; but olean- 
ders, geraniums, carnations, the hinne plant for red- 
dening the finger-tips, the violet and chrysanthemum are 
common. 

The absence of forests and jungles accounts for the in- 
significance of the Egyptian fauna. The hyena, jackal, 
wolf and fox — but no greater beasts of prey — haunt the 
desert places and old tombs and ruins; the hare, rabbit, 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 13 

jerboa, lynx and ichneumon are found in the valley and 
hills ; weasels, rats and mice are among the town plagues, 
and bats infest the mummy-pits. The principal object of 
chase is the antelope, of which there are several varieties, 
the most graceful being the gazelle, often tamed as a house 
pet. The wild ass, the king of game according to the Per- 
sians, is seldom met with now, and the wild boar is only 
represented by a timid breed in the Fayoum and Delta, es- 
pecially common in the marshes near the Mediterranean. 
The wildcat is becoming obsolete ; and the crocodile is fol- 
lowing the example of the hippopotamus, and retreating to 
tropical regions out of the way of European guns. The 
beasts of burden most in use are the camel, and the ass, the 
former always one-humped. The " ship of the desert " like 
the horse (the Egyptian breed of which is very indifferent) 
and the dark-coated, mild-eyed buffalo, which is gaining 
ground as a field-labourer, was unknown to the ancient 
Egyptians, and is an importation of a comparatively late 
period. The beautiful short-horned cattle, which were fa- 
mous in the days of the Pharaohs, are reserved for field- 
work, and are seldom killed except for Franks. Butchers' 
meat in Egypt is mutton ; for sheep, especially black sheep, 
are very numerous ; goats are also common, and the wild 
goat makes a worthy quarry on the mountain ridges of the 
eastern desert. Dogs are considered unclean animals by 
the Moslems ; but they make excellent scavengers, and the 
fierce breed in Upper Egypt forms an efficient body of vil- 
lage guards. Cats swarm in Cairo where they have or had 



14 EGYPT 

a species of feline asylum of royal foundation. Pigs are 
kept only for Franks and Copts. 

The frequent exposure of carrion feeds many birds of 
prey — several species of vulture, both the great and the 
small, and of eagles, falcons and hawks i and the common 
kite helps the aquiline vulture, the crow and the dog to keep 
the streets of Cairo sweet. Swallows, wagtails and larks 
are the commonest small birds ; kingfishers use their skill 
on the Nile; bee-eaters and goat-suckers are often seen. 
In the country villages the pigeon is carefully cultivated 
and more space and ingenuity are devoted to the dove-cote 
than to the peasant's own dwelling. Chickens are very 
small in Egypt ; domestic geese rare. A fine breed of tur- 
keys has been introduced. Quails migrate in large num- 
bers to the Nile valley and a red legged partridge is not un- 
common ; the sand-grouse abound in the deserts, where also 
the Arabs hunt the ostrich. The chief water- fowl are wild 
ducks and geese, the ibis, plover, golden snipe, egret, 
flamingo, pelican, cormorant and heron. 

Besides the fast-retreating crocodile, the reptiles of Egypt 
consist mainly in some smaller Saurians (including the 
chameleon), serpents (both cobra and cerastes) and harm- 
less snakes. The Nile fish are numerous but insipid. 
Scorpions, enormous spiders, the fly and mosquito, and 
every variety of small vermin form the worst plague of 
Egypt in the present day. Locusts are, happily, but rarely 
seen, but when they do appear they do justice to their repu- 
tation for destroying everything in their path. Moths are 






o 

O 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 15 

more common than butterflies ; grasshoppers and cock- 
roaches abound ; bees are largely kept but their honey is not 
so good as the English j silkworms are bred on the mul- 
berry-trees in Lower Egypt, but the silk is not equal to the 
Syrian. 

The agricultural year in Egypt begins in the autumn. 
On the 17th of June a miraculous drop of water is believed 
to fall into the Nile, and, if not on the actual " Night of 
the Drop," soon afterwards the river is observed to swell. 
All through July and August the river rises, not regularly, 
but by a series of leaps ; and the peasants are busily em- 
ployed in making ready the canals or deep, narrow trenches 
which are to convey the fertilizing water over the land. In 
September, — theoretically, on the first day of the first month 
Tut of the Coptic year, which is the eleventh, but really 
about ten days, or a fortnight later, — the Nile attains its 
full height. Every inch in the measurement of the rise is 
of the utmost consequence. A little excess means a 
destructive flood, and all the ruin of melted villages, 
swamped crops, and drowned men and beasts ; whilst a 
slight deficiency causes a corresponding decrease in the cul- 
tivable land, and the fields that the river does not reach 
have to be left fallow and barren for another year. 

In a good medium Nile, rising about twenty-five feet at 
the Nilometer opposite Cairo, the stream does not overflow 
the banks which in consequence of the greater facilities for 
artificial watering and consequently uninterrupted cultiva- 
tion are somewhat higher than the land further from the 



i6 EGYPT 

river. It is kept within its banks by dams, which prevent 
it from entering the canals, until the day arrives when the 
government with much pomp and circumstance initiates the 
cutting of the dams by demolishing the pillar of earth which 
closes the canal of Cairo, and which is called the " Bride 
of the Nile," as being the Moslem substitute for the virgin 
sacrificed to the rising river in the olden days before Islam 
had purified the people. At this signal the canals all along 
the river are opened and the stream is allowed to flow into 
the network of trenches that intersect the country in every 
direction. Dams bar the canals at intervals, and the ar- 
rested water turns aside and pours through sluices into the 
drains which chequer the surface of the neighbouring 
fields. When these are sufficiently saturated, the dam is 
cut, and the stream flows on to the next dam, where it is 
again arrested to fertilize the next group of fields. The 
utmost care is taken to guide and regulate the inundation, 
and a large body of engineers superintend and inspect the 
dams and sluices and see that everything is in good order 
before the river is let in. 

During the inundation the country presents a singular 
appearance. It is nothing else than " a fresh-water archi- 
pelago," — a sheet of water divided into squares, like a 
chequer board, by the embankments of countless canals, 
with islands here and there, consisting in land which is too 
high to be touched by the inundation, on which a village is 
therefore securely perched, and whither the mice and wild 
animals fly for refuge, and the cattle are driven for safety. 



THE LAND OF EGYPT 17 

The familiar pigeons are off to the desert, and it is now 
the turn of water-birds. 

As soon as the river has subsided enough to let the moist 
clayey surface of the soil appear, the principal crops of the 
Winter Season are sown. This is the chief of the three 
seasons of Egyptian agriculture, and indeed in the Upper 
Valley the only important season. It is now that the wheat, 
barley, beans, lentils, chick-peas, lupins, clover, vetches, 
etc., are sprinkled over the soft mould, which breaks off 
itself, and is seldom subjected to even the superficial scratch- 
ing of the primitive Egyptian plough — the only instrument 
in use for turning the soil, except the wooden hoe. The 
seed is pressed in by cattle driven over it dragging palm- 
branches or a toothed roller is passed across. These crops 
come to maturity about March and April, the great harvest- 
time of Egypt. 



ANCIENT DIVISIONS OF EGYPT 

SIR I. GARDNER WILKINSON 

r H ^HE whole of Egypt is styled in Arabic Jrd-Musry 
I or simply Musr {Misr)^ a name given also to 

"^ Cairo itself; which recalls the old Hebrew Miz- 
raim (A/zzr/w), " the two Mizrs." In the ancient Egyp- 
tian language it was called Khemi^ or " the land of Khem" 
answering to the land of " Ham," or rather " Khem," 
mentioned in the Bible ; and in Coptic Chm'e^ or ChemL 
According to Arab tradition, the son of Ham had four 
sons : Oshmoon, Athreeb, Sa and Copt. The last of these 
peopled the country between Assouan and Coptos; Osh- 
moon, that to the north as far as Menoof (Memphis) ; 
Athreeb, the Delta ; and Sa, the province of Bahayreh, as 
well as the land of Barbary. Copt, however, having con- 
quered the rest of Egypt, became sovereign of the whole 
country, and gave it his name. 

The two sides of the valley seem at all times to have 
been distinguished generally with reference to their position 
east and west of the river. By the ancient Egyptians the 
desert on each side was merely styled " the eastern and 
western mountain " ; and, at a later period, " the Arabian 
and Libyan shore " ; parts of the mountain ranges having 
always had certain names attached to them, as at the pres- 




^ 



ANCIENT DIVISIONS OF EGYPT 19 

ent day. They are now called " the eastern and western 
shore " j and it is remarkable that the Arabs of the eastern 
desert have substituted the term Bur' A'gem " the Persian^* 
for the old name ^'•Arabian land," applying it to the space 
between the Nile and the Red Sea. A'gem^ however, is 
used by the Arabs for " foreign." 

Egypt, under the Moslems, has been divided into prov- 
inces, or bey-liks^ each under the command of a bey ; or, 
according to their new title Mamobr^ or Mod'eer ; and in 
the time of the Memlooks the whole country was governed 
by twenty-four beys, including the Delta. 

The large or market towns of Egypt have the title of 
Bender. Medeeneh is a capital and is applied to Cairo and 
the capital of the Fayoum. Belief^ or Beled^ is the usual 
appellation of a town ; whence Ehn beledj son of a town, or 
townsman. Kafr is a village; Nezleh or Nezle a village 
founded by the people of another place, as Nezlet el Pent. 
Minieh (corrupted into Mit, particularly in the Delta) is 
also applied to villages colonized from other places. Beni^ 
" the sons," is given to those founded by a tribe or family, 
as Bent Amran^ " the sons of Amran," and then many 
villages in the district are often included under the same 
name. Zow'yeh is a hamlet having a mosque. Kasr^ or 
Kusr, is a palace, or any large building. Boorg is a tower ; 
and it is even applied to pigeon-houses built in that form. 
Sahil^ a level spot, or opening in the bank where the river 
is accessible from the plain. Merseh^ an anchoring-place, 
or harbour. Dayr is a convent, and frequently points out 



20 EGYPT 

a Christian village. Kotti is a mound, and indicates the site 
of an ancient town ; and Tel is commonly used in the Delta 
in the same sense. Kharab and Kooffree are applied to 
ruins. Beerbeh or Birheh (which is taken from the Coptic) 
signifies a temple. Wadee or Wady is a valley; G'ehel a 
mountain ; and Birkeh a lake, or a reach in the Nile. 

In the time of the Pharaohs Egypt consisted of two great 
regions, the upper and lower country, both of equal conse- 
quence from which the kings derived the title of Lord of 
the two Regions. Each of these had its peculiar crown, 
which the monarch at his coronation put on at the same 
time, showing the equal rank of two states, while they 
prove the existence of two distinct kingdoms at an early 
period. 

Egypt was then divided into thirty-six nomes (depart- 
ments or countries), from Syene to the sea. In the time 
of the Ptolemies and early Caesars this number still con- 
tinued the same ; " ten," says Strabo, " being assigned to 
the Thebaid, ten to the Delta, and sixteen to the interme- 
diate province." The geographer adds, " Some say there 
were as many nomes as chambers in the labyrinth, which 
•were under thirty. These were again subdivided into 
toparchiae, and these too into smaller portions." The num- 
ber of chambers in the labyrinth is not quite certain : 
Herodotus, Pliny, and Strabo do not agree on this point j 
and it is probable that, as the number of the nomes in- 
creased, other places were added for their accommodation ; 
the labyrinth being the building where the assemblies of 



ANCIENT DIVISIONS OF EGYPT 21 

the nomes met, and each had its own apartment, Pliny 
gives forty-four nomes to all Egypt, some of which are 
mentioned under other names. 

The triple partition of the country described by Strabo 
varied at another time, and consisted of Upper and Lower 
Egypt, with an intermediate province, containing only seven 
nomes, and thence called Heptanomis. Upper Egypt or 
the Thebaid then reached to the Thebaica Phylace, now 
Daroot e' Shereef ; Heptanomis thence to the fork of the 
Delta; and the rest was comprehended in Lower Egypt. 
In the time of the later Roman emperors, the Delta, or 
Lower Egypt, was divided into four provinces or districts — 
Augustamnica Prima and Secunda, and ^syptus Prima and 
Secunda; being still subdivided into the same nomes; and 
in the time of Arcadius, the son of Theodosius the Great, 
Heptanomis received the name of Arcadia. The Thebaid, 
too, was made into two parts, under the name of Upper 
and Lower, the line of separation passing between Panopolis 
and Ptolemal's Hermii. The nomes also increased in num- 
ber, and amounted to fifty-seven, of which the Delta alone 
contained thirty-four, nearly equal to those of all Egypt in 
the time of the Pharaohs. 

The frontier of ancient Egypt was properly at Philae; 
but southern Ethiopia was conquered by the Pharaohs of 
the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties ; and though after- 
wards partly abandoned, was again included within the lim- 
its of the Egyptian territory after the accession of the 
Ptolemies. 



22 EGYPT 

Among the early Pharaohs who conquered the country 
were Osirtasen III. of the Twelfth Dynasty, who fixed the 
Egyptian frontier at Semneh, above the Second Cataract, 
and invaded the country of the Negroes; and Thothmes I., 
who left a record of his triumphs over them on a rock op- 
posite Tombos. Amunoph III. built the two temples of 
Sedinga and Soleb; and Rameses II. began, or, at least, 
greatly enlarged the principal temple at Gebel Berkel, after- 
wards completed by Tirhaka; and both those kings ex- 
tended their conquests far into Africa. 

The invasion of the Caesars, who pushed their conquests 
under Petronius, praefect of Egypt in the time of Augustus, 
as far as Napata, was owing to an incursion of the Ethio- 
pians, who had penetrated to Syene, and overwhelmed the 
garrison stationed there to protect the Egyptian frontier. 

Napata, the capital of Queen Candace, was, according to 
Pliny, 870 Roman miles above the Cataracts, and is sup- 
posed to be El Berkel of the present day, where pyramids 
and extensive ruins denote the former existence of an im- 
portant city. Gebel Berkel was called in hieroglyphics 
" the Sacred Mountain." 

Strabo says the Ethiopians above Syene consisted of the 
Troglodytae, Blemmyes, Nubae, and Megabari. The Mega- 
bari and Blemmyes inhabited the eastern desert north of 
Meroe to the frontiers of Egypt, and were under the domin- 
ion of the Ethiopians. The Ichthyophagi lived on the 
shore of the Red Sea ; the Troglodytae from Berenice, south- 
wards, between it and the Nile j and the Nubse, an African 



ANCIENT DIVISIONS OF EGYPT 23 

nation, were on the left bank, and independent of 
Ethiopia. 

Pliny says the only cities of Ethiopia found and taken by 
Petronius on his march to Napata were Pselcis, Primis, 
Aboccis, Phthuris, Cambusis, Attena and Stadisis, remarka- 
ble for its cataract, which, the naturalist says, " deprived 
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of their hearing." 

Whether by Sesostris Herodotus means Osirtasen or 
Rameses IL, he is equally wrong in saying that he was the 
only Egyptian monarch who ruled in Ethiopia; as several 
other Pharaohs not only extended their conquests, but erected 
temples and other buildings in that country, the remains of 
which still exist and that, too, in Upper Ethiopia. 

The names of the monarchs found above the Second 
Cataract are Osirtasen III. and Thothmes III, at Semneh ; 
Thothmes I. at Tombos ; Thothmes III., at Semneh, 
Dosha, Sai and opposite Meroe; Thothmes IV. at El 
Berkel(?), Amunoph III. at Sedinga, Soleb, Berkel(?), 
Tombos and Semneh ; Atin-re-Bakhan at Soleb ; Osirei I. 
at Dosha; and Rameses II. and Tirhaka at El Berkel. 
Diodorus, Pliny and Strabo extend the conquests of Sesostris 
as far as the vicinity of the modern Berbera, beyond the 
straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. 

It does not appear that the monarchs after the Eighteenth 
Dynasty continued to extend, or even to maintain their 
conquests in this country ; and few of them appear to have 
included Lower Ethiopia, between the First and Second 
Cataracts, within the limits of their Egyptian territory. And 



24 EGYPT 

this circumstance no doubt led to the remark that Ethiopia 
was little known before the accession of the Ptolemies ; 
though in fact they only re-extended the frontier a short 
distance into what is now called Nubia, 

Elephantine was the frontier in the time of Psammetichus. 
In Strabo's time Syene was again the frontier, the 
Romans having, as he observes, " confined the province of 
Egypt within his former limits." Philae then belonged " in 
common to the Egyptians and Ethiopians." This did not, 
however, prevent the Caesars from considering Lower 
Ethiopia as belonging to them, or from adding to the tem- 
ples already erected there. 

Philae and the Cataracts are, as of old, the boundary of 
Egypt and Nubia. Here commences the country of the 
Barabra, which extends thence to the Second Cataract at 
Wadi-Halfa and is divided into two districts; that to the 
north inhabited by the Kenoos, or Kensee tribe, the southern 
portion by the Nooba. They have each their own lan- 
guage; but it is a singular fact that the Kensee, which 
ceases to be spoken about Dayr and throughout the whole 
of the Nooba district, is found again above the Second 
Cataract. This Nooba tribe may perhaps be connected 
with the Nobatae mentioned by Procopius ; though there is 
some reason for believing that the name and perhaps the 
people were known there long before. It is now customary 
for us to call them all Nubians, as the Arabs comprehend 
them under the general name of Barabra, and as the Greeks 
denominated the whole country Ethiopia. In former times 



ANCIENT DIVISIONS OF EGYPT 25 

under the Romans, the northern part of Nubia was called 
Dodeca Schoenus, which comprehended the space lying be- 
tween the First and Second Cataract (or Philae) and Hierasy- 
caminon, and received from its length the name of " twelve 
schoenes." 

The character of the country above Philae differs very 
much from Egypt, particularly from that part below Esne. 
The hills are mostly sandstone and granite, and, from their 
coming very near the river, frequently leave only a narrow 
strip of soil at the immediate bank, on which the people de- 
pend for the scanty supply of corn and other produce grown 
in the country. It is not therefore surprising that the 
Nubians are poor; though from their limited wants and 
thrifty habits they do not suffer from the miseries of poverty. 
The palm-tree, which there produces dates of very superior 
quality, is to them a great resource, both in the plentiful 
supply it affords for their own use and in the profitable ex- 
portation of its fruit to Egypt, where it is highly prized, es- 
pecially that of the Ibreemee kind, the fruit of which is much 
larger and of better flavour than that of other palms, and 
the tree differs in the appearance of its leaves which are of 
a finer and softer texture. The Sont, or Mimosa Nilotica, 
also furnishes articles for export, of great importance to the 
Nubian, in its gum, pods for tanning and charcoal ; and 
henneh^ senna, baskets, mats, and a few other things pro- 
duced or made in Nubia, return a good profit in sending 
them to Egypt. Nubia justly boasts of one blessing, which 
is that fleas and bugs will not live there ; and the Berberis 



26 EGYPT 

in Cairo are loud in their complaints against these plagues 
of Egypt. 

When the Nile is low, the land is irrigated by water- 
wheels, which are the pride of the Nubian peasant. Even 
the endless and melancholy creaking of these clumsy 
machines is a delight to him, which no grease is permitted 
to diminish, all that he can get being devoted to the shaggy 
hair of his unturbaned head. For the Nubians, in general, 
allow the hair of the head to grow long, and seldom shave 
or wear a cap, except in the Nooba district, as at Derr, and 
a few other places ; and though less attentive to his toilette 
than the long-haired Ababdeh, a well-greased Nubian does 
not fail to rejoice in his shining shoulders. 

A certain portion of land is irrigated by each water-wheel, 
and the wealth of an individual is estimated by the number 
of these machines, as in other countries by farms or acres 
of land ; and, as is reasonable to suppose, in a hot climate 
like Nubia, they prefer the employment of oxen for the 
arduous duty of raising water, to drawing it, like the Egyp- 
tian fellah, by the pole and bucket of the shaduf. 

Devotedly attached to their country and their country- 
men, like the Swiss and inhabitants of poor districts who 
seek their fortunes abroad, they always herd together in for- 
eign towns ; and one Nubian servant never fails to bring a 
daily levee of Ethiopians to a Cairene house, pouring forth 
an unceasing stream of unintelligible words, in a jargon which 
has obtained for them the name of Barahra^ applied by the 
Arabs much in the same sense as " Barharoi " by the Greeks. 



ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS 

VILLIERS STUART 

THE attempt to trace back Egyptian history to its 
source is much like tracing back the Nile to its 
head-waters, as, after following up its stream for 
hundreds of miles, you will still find the same villages, the 
same palm-trees, the same mountain ranges in monotonous 
uniformity ; so in the stream of Egyptian history the same 
events, the same triumphs in peace and war, seem to recur 
again and again. If you begin with the Nineteenth 
Dynasty, you find Rameses the Third invading his neigh- 
bours, overthrowing Libyans in the west and the wandering 
tribes on the east, carrying his arms into Syria and triumph- 
ing over the kings and chiefs of Asia Minor, or building 
new temples and developing the gold, silver, or copper 
mines of Sinai, or the alabaster quarries of Egypt. If you 
go back five reigns to the annals of Rameses the Second 
you find the record of his exploits so exactly similar that 
you might suppose that his descendant had borrowed them 
for his own glorification ; or go back to a previous dynasty, 
the Eighteenth, and you find the great warrior kings, the 
Thothmes and Amunophs, fighting the same list of enemies 
and achieving the same triumphs ; or skip over six dynasties 
and go back to the Twelfth, the triumphs of peace and war 



28 EGYPT 

seem but vain repetitions ; the story is the same, the name 
alone is changed. Or spring back another six dynasties, to 
the times of King Pepi and Nofrekara, and you still find them 
slaughtering the Ethiopians, levying tributes on their neigh-i 
hours, restoring temples, opening up roads to the desert of 
Sinai, working its turquoise mines and bringing its gold and 
silver to Egypt, mingled with notices of building of the 
Pyramids and other public works ; and in the scanty rec- 
ords we have of the Third Dynasty at which point the 
stream of history runs dry, we find Senofreou fighting the 
tribes to the east of the Red Sea, and his name is inscribed 
on the rocks of Sinai. Egyptian history resembles the Nile, 
also, in its solitary course. As that river flows on all alone, 
unaided by a single X.v\h\xX.?ivy^ for hundreds of miles through 
the desert^ imparting life and fertility to its arid sands, so for 
a long tale of centuries did the current of Egyptian history 
flow on its lonely course without a contemporary, develop- 
ing on its way the arts of civilized life, including that gift 
peculiar to man of recording thoughts and events in writing 
and painting and sculpture, while other races were yet en- 
veloped in the night of barbarism and savage ignorance, and 
passed away without trace or record. 

With regard to the origin of the ancient Egyptians, there 
seems no doubt that the Egyptian races were of the same 
origin as the European — both came from Asia; there is 
reason to believe that they found their way into Egypt from 
Arabia by way of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and then 
through Abyssinia. The reason for believing them to be 



ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS 29 

of the same race as that which peopled Europe are, first, 
their features ; second, the analogies of their language. In 
the latter we find many words almost identical with words 
in the Indo-Germanic languages j for instance, Mut is the 
ancient Egyptian for mother. 

Besides language the features also of the ruling class of 
the ancient Egyptians point to the common origin of them 
and of the European races. It is remarkable that the farther 
you go back, the more European the faces become. In the 
neighbourhood of the Pyramids there are a great number of 
tombs belonging to the courtiers, priests and officers of 
state of the Fourth Dynasty, and presenting us with scores 
of portraits of the men of that time ; one and all of them 
are strikingly European. It is a curious thing, however, 
that in later times the governing race appears to have un- 
dergone a modification, and has a more Semitic look than 
in the early times above referred to; this may have arisen 
from intermarriages with the neighbouring Asiatic states, 
I allude to the Nineteenth and subsequent dynasties. The 
facts I have cited do not, of course, prove that the Egyp- 
tians came from Europe, that would be contrary to all tradi- 
tion and all probability ; but they give good grounds for 
concluding either that Europe was partly colonized from 
Egypt, or that both Egypt and Europe are colonized from 
the same centre. 

It will be asked why I say that the old Egyptians came 
from Asia by way of Abyssinia. The reasons for thinking 
so are that the Egyptians traced the home of their gods, 



30 EGYPT 

that is to say, of their most ancient traditions, to Abys- 
sinia; they called it the sacred land, and whenever they 
represented the inhabitants of Abyssinia, they represented 
them as' identical in dress and complexion with themselves. 

It is quite possible that civilization may have begun in 
the south and yet have attained its highest development in 
the north. It is argued that because the Pyramids are 
in the north, and because they and the tombs about them 
are the earliest examples of Egyptian civilization that have 
come down to us, that therefore civilization must have 
commenced in the north. But it would be absurd to sup- 
pose that the Pyramids and the tombs that cluster around 
them were the earliest fruits of civilization, for they contain 
the evidences of an already advanced stage of the arts; 
they indicate where the previously scattered strength of the 
nation was first concentrated and gathered together into one 
mighty stream; but they are far from taking us back to 
the first sources to which that broad and strong current 
owed its origin. 

As a matter of fact, we know that Menai was a South- 
erner. He came from Abydos, not far north of Thebes ; 
but he made Memphis the seat of his government because 
it stood at the apex of the Delta, the most extensive habit- 
able tract, and therefore the most populous in Egypt. 



7 



THE MODERN EGYPTIANS 

DR. G. SCHWEINFURTH 

"^HE population of Egypt is composed of the fol- 
lowing ten different elements, (i) The Fellahin ; 
(2) Copts ; (3) Bedouins ; (4) Arabian Dwellers 
in Towns ; (5) Berbers ; (6) Sudan Negroes ; (7) Turks ; 
(8) Levantines; (9) Armenians and Jews; (10) Gypsies. 

(i) The Fellahin, the tillers or peasants, with whom must 
be reckoned the Coptic peasants of Upper Egypt, form the 
bulk of the population and may be reckoned as the sinews 
of the national strength. 

(2) The Copts are undoubtedly the most direct descend- 
ants of the ancient Egyptians. The size of the Coptic 
population cannot be very accurately stated. They are most 
numerous in the towns of Northern Egypt, around the 
ancient Coptos, at Negadeh, Luxor, Esneh, Dendera, 
Girgeh, Tahta, and particularly at Assiout and Akhmim. 
A large proportion of all these places is Coptic. 

Most of the Copts that dwell in towns are engaged in 
the more refined handicrafts (as watchmakers, goldsmiths, 
jewellers, embroiderers, tailors, weavers, cabinet-makers, 
turners, manufacturers of spurious antiquities, etc.) or in 
trade; or as clerks, accountants, and notaries. Their 
physique is accordingly materially different from that of 



32 EGYPT 

the fellahin and even from that of Coptic peasants. They 
are generally of more delicate frame, with small hands and 
feet; their necks are longer and their skulls are higher and 
narrower than those of the peasantry, and, lastly, their 
complexion is fairer. These differences are sufficiently ac- 
counted for by their mode of life ; for when we compare 
those Copts who are engaged in rustic pursuits, or the 
Coptic camel-drivers of Upper Egypt, or with the fellahin, 
we find that the two races are not distinguishable from 
each other. 

(3) Bedouins. Bedu (sing, bedawi) is the name applied 
to the nomadic Arabs, and Jrab to those who immigrated 
at a later period and settled in the valley of the Nile. 
Though differing greatly in origin and language, the wan- 
dering tribes of Egypt all profess Mohammedanism. Again, 
they all differ greatly from the stationary Egyptian popula- 
tion ; and this contrast is accounted for by the radical 
difference between the influences of the desert and those 
of the Nile valley. 

The Bedouins may be divided into two leading groups : 
(i) Bedouins in the narrower sense, /. <?., Arab-speaking 
tribes, most of whom have probably immigrated from 
Arabia or Syria, and who occupy the deserts between the 
Nile and the Red Sea, and extending to the frontiers of 
the Abyssinian mountains. These are the descendants 
of the ancient Blemmyes. The three principal races of 
the second group, with whom alone we have to deal as 
inhabitants of Egypt, are the Hadendoa^ the Bis bar in and 




O 
I 

>• 

O 
Q 

Q 

< 

CO 

>^ 
ta 

2; 

o 



THE MODERN EGYPTIANS 33 

the Ahahdeh. They are widely scattered in the valleys of 
the desert between the tropics and the latitude of Keneh 
and Koser, and lead a poverty-stricken life with their very 
scanty stock of camels and goats. Though closely resem- 
bling the other Bega tribes in appearance, the Ahahdeh 
possess an original language of their own, which, however, 
they have long since exchanged for bad Arabic. They 
have also adopted the costume of the fellahin, while the 
Bisharin and Hadendoa tend their large flocks of sheep and 
herds of camels in a half-naked condition, girded with a 
leathern apron and wrapped in a kind of blanket. All 
these " Ethiopians " are remarkable for their fine and 
almost Caucasian cast of features, their very dark, bronze- 
coloured complexion, and their luxuriant growth of hair, 
shading their heads like a cloud, or hanging down in num- 
berless plaits over their necks and shoulders. Their figures 
are beautifully symmetrical, and more or less slender in 
accordance with their means of subsistence, and their limbs 
are delicately and gracefully formed. In other respects 
they resemble all the other children of the desert, as in the 
purity of their complexion, the peculiar thinness of their 
necks, and the premature wrinkling of the skin of their 
faces. Compared with their bold and quarrelsome neigh- 
bours the Bisharin^ the Ahahdeh are exceedingly gentle and 
inoffensive. 

There are three important Bedouin tribes in the pen- 
insula of Mount Sinai. In Upper Egypt, besides the 
Ababdeh, the only Bedouins who occupy the eastern bank 



34 EGYPT 

of the Nile are the Beni Wasel and th6 Jtwanl^ or Haw- 
adat^ who, however, have now settled on both banks of the 
Theban Nile valley and are gradually blending with the 
fellahin, and the Maazeh^ who dwell in groups among the 
limestone mountains between Suez and Keneh, where there 
are good pastures at places. Most of the Arabian Bedouins, 
on the other hand, who belong to Egypt, confine them- 
selves to the western bank of the Nile. They occupy the 
whole of this side of the river from the Fayoum as far as 
Abydos near Girgeh, and it is mainly with their aid that 
communication is maintained with the western oases, peopled 
by a totally different race, who till the ground and possess 
no camels, being probably allied to the Berbers of Northern 
Africa. 

The Bedouins of the North have inherited with com- 
parative purity the fiery blood of the desert-tribes who 
achieved such marvellous exploits under the banner of the 
Prophet, but the traveller will rarely come in contact with 
them unless he undertakes a journey across the desert. 
The Bedouins who assist travellers in the ascent of the 
pyramids belong to the Nagama tribe. Genuine Bedouins 
are to be found nowhere but in their desert home, where 
to a great extent they still retain the spirit of independ- 
ence, the courage and the restlessness of their ancestors. 
As in the time of Herodotus, the tent of the Bedouin is still 
his home. Where it is pitched is a matter of indifference 
to him, if only the pegs which secure it be firmly driven 
into the earth, if it shelter his wife and child from the 



THE MODERN EGYPTIANS 35 

burning sunshine and the chilly night air, and if pasturage 
ground and a spring be within easy reach. At Ramleh, on 
the coast, near Alexandria, the traveller will have an op- 
portunity of seeing a whole colony of the poorest class 
encamped in their tents, where they live in the most frugal 
possible manner, with a few miserable goats and the fowls 
which subsist on the rubbish in their neighbourhood. 
Though professors of El-Islam, they are considerably less 
strict in their observances than the fellahin of the valley of 
the Nile, who are themselves sufficiently lax, and above all 
they sadly neglect the religious duty of cleanliness. 

(4) Arabian Dwellers in Towns. Those Arabs with 
whom the traveller usually comes in contact in towns 
are shopkeepers, officials, servants, coachmen and donkey- 
attendants, or perhaps these last only, as most of the best 
shops are kept by Europeans. These Arabs are generally 
of a much more mixed origin than the fellahin. It thus 
happens that the citizens of the Egyptian towns consist of 
persons of every complexion from dark brown to white, 
with the features of the worshippers of Osiris or the sharp 
profile of the Bedouins, and with the slender figure of the 
fellah or the corpulence of the Turk. Among the lower 
classes, frequent intermarriage with negro women has dark- 
ened the complexion and thickened the features of their 
offspring ; while the higher ranks, being descended from 
white slaves or Turkish mothers, more nearly resemble 
the European type. As the inhabitants of the towns could 
not be so much oppressed by their rulers as the peasantry, 



36 EGYPT 

we find that they exhibit a more independent spirit, greater 
enterprise, and a more cheerful disposition than the fellahin. 
At the same time, they are not free from the dreamy char- 
acter peculiar to Orientals, nor from a tinge of the apathy 
of fatalism ; and their indolence contrasts strongly with the 
industry of their European rivals in political, scientific, ar- 
tistic, and all business pursuits. The townspeople profess 
Islamism, but, in their youth, particularly, they are becom- 
ing more and more lax in their obedience to the Koran. 
Thus the custom of praying in public, outside the house- 
doors and shops, is gradually falling into disuse. The 
European dress, moreover, is gradually superseding the 
Oriental, though the latter is far more picturesque, and 
better suited to the climate. On the whole, however, they 
are bigoted Mohammedans, and share the contempt with 
which the fellahin regard all other religions. Their daily 
intercourse with unbelievers and their dread of the power 
of Christian nations tend, however, to keep their fanati- 
cism, which otherwise would be unbounded, in check, and 
has even induced them to admit strangers to witness the 
most sacred ceremonies in their mosques. 

(5) Berbers. The name Berberi is applied to the Nubian 
inhabitants of the Nile valley between the neighbourhood 
of Assouan and the Fourth Cataract. The Egyptians and 
Nubians are radically diff^erent, and the dislike between the 
two races is carried to such an extent that Nubians never 
marry Egyptian wives. The Nubians are inferior to the 
Egyptians in industry and energy, especially in tilling the 




PORTABLE RESTAURANT OF CAIRO 



THE MODERN EGYPTIANS 37 

soil, and in physical (and perhaps also in intellectual) 
vigour; and they are more superstitious and fanatical, as is 
indicated by the numerous amulets they wear round their 
necks and arms. They are, however, superior to the 
Egyptians in cleanliness, honesty and subordination, and 
possess a more highly developed sense of honour. The 
traveller must not expect to find them very sincerely at- 
tached or grateful, any more than the native Egyptians, but 
as servants they are certainly preferable. 

In their native country, the Berbers till the banks of the 
Nile, but their land is of very limited extent and poorly 
cultivated, and as their harvests are scanty they are rarely 
able to support large families. They accordingly often 
emigrate at an early age to the richer lowlands, chiefly to 
the large towns, in quest of employment. When the 
Berber has succeeded in amassing a moderate fortune, he 
returns to settle in his native country, of which throughout 
his whole career he never entirely loses sight, and to which 
he frequently remits his hardly earned savings for the 
benefit of his relatives. The cold winter nights in Egypt 
are very trying to the poor Berbers, who often have to 
sleep in the open air outside the doors, and many of them 
are attacked by consumption. They are most commonly 
employed as door-keepers, house-servants, grooms and 
runners, for which their swiftness renders them unrivalled, 
coachmen and cooks. Nubian women are seldom seen in 
Egypt except as slaves. 

(6) Sudan Negroes. Like the Berbers, most of the 



38 EGYPT 

negroes in Egypt are professors of El-lslam, to the easily 
intelligible doctrines of which they readily and zealously 
attach themselves. Most of the older negroes and negresses 
with whom the traveller meets have originally been brought 
to Egypt as slaves, and belong to natives by whom they 
are treated more like members of the family than like 
servants. Although every slave who desires to be emanci- 
pated may now with the aid of government sever the ties 
which bind him to his master, most of the negroes prefer 
to remain on the old footing with the family which sup- 
ports them and relieves them of the anxiety of providing 
for themselves. The eunuchs, who also belong almost 
exclusively to the negro race, but are rapidly becoming 
rarer, very seldom avail themselves of this opportunity of 
regaining their liberty, as their emancipation would neces- 
sarily terminate the life of ease and luxury in which they 
delight. Under the present government slavery is very 
rapidly approaching complete extinction in Egypt, chiefly 
in consequence of changes in the mode of living and the 
growing preference of the wealthy for paid servants. The 
negroes who voluntarily settle in Egypt, constituting a 
body of considerable size, form the dregs of the people 
and are employed in the most menial offices. 

Most of the negro races of Central Africa to the north 
of the equator are represented at Cairo, particularly in the 
rank and file of the negro regiments. 

(7) Turks. Although the dynasty of the viceroys of 
Egypt is of Turkish origin, a comparatively small section 



THE MODERN EGYPTIANS 39 

of the community belongs to that nation. According to 
the census of 1897, there are 40,126 Turks in Egypt, but 
among these are reckoned Turkish subjects from every 
part of the Ottoman Empire. Only a few are genuine 
Osmanlis. The Turks of Egypt are chiefly to be found 
in the towns, where most of them are government officials, 
soldiers and merchants. The Turkish language is little 
understood in Egypt. 

(8) Levantines. A link between the various classes 
of dwellers in Egypt and the visitors to the banks of the 
Nile is formed by the members of the various Mediterranean 
races, especially Syrians and Greeks, known as Levantines, 
who have been settled here for several generations, and 
form no inconsiderable element in the population of the 
larger towns. Most of them profess the Latin form of 
Christianity, and Arabic has now become their mother 
tongue, although they still speak their old national dialects. 
They are apt linguists, learning the European languages 
with great rapidity, and good men of business, and owing 
to these qualities they are often employed as shopmen and 
clerks. Their services have also become indispensable at 
the consulates and in several of the government offices. 
A large proportion of them are wealthy. The Egyptian 
press is almost exclusively in the hands of Syrians. 

(9) Armenians and Jews. This section of the com- 
munity is about as numerous as the last, and in some 
respects contrasts favourably with it. The Armenians 
generally possess excellent abilities, and a singular aptitude 



40 EGYPT 

for learning both Oriental and European languages, which 
they often acquire with great grammatical accuracy. Many 
of them are wealthy goldsmiths and jewellers. 

The Jews are met with only in Cairo and Alexandria. 
They are often distinguishable by their red hair from the 
native Egyptians as well as by other characteristics. Most 
of them are from Palestine, though of Spanish origin, but 
many have recently immigrated from Roumania. All the 
money-changers in the streets, and many of the wealthiest 
merchants of Egypt, are Jews, and notwithstanding the 
popular prejudice entertained against them, owing, as is 
alleged, to their disregard of cleanliness, they now form 
one of the most highly respected sections of the com- 
munity. 

(lo) Egypt also contains numerous Gypsies, whose 
status resembles that of their race in European countries. 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 

STANLEY LANE-POOLE 

f I "^HE true Egyptians, the vast majority of the 
I modern inhabitants and almost the sole con- 

"^ tributors to the wealth of Egypt are the Fellahin 
or peasants. . . . Every operation connected with the 
production of the rich crops which are the wealth of Egypt 
is performed by the fellah. He keeps the canals filled in 
the dry season of the year, laboriously ladling up the water 
to the higher levels in the buckets of the shaduf ; he reg- 
ulates the spread of the inundation by dams and sluices ; 
he sows the seeds, frightens off the birds, reaps the corn 
and garners the grain in the village barns. 

The fellah is the only real worker in Egypt and he has 
been used to doing all the work from ages long before 
Moses. We see him depicted on the oldest wall pictures 
of the tombs and temples doing just the same tasks that he 
does to-day, and looking just the same figure of a man 
that he looks now. Assyrians and Persians, Greeks and 
Romans, Arabs and Turks, have conquered his land, and 
taken unto themselves wives of his slenderly beautiful 
daughters, and have changed his language and his religion ; 
but him they have not changed. 



42 EGYPT 

The fellahin are an extremely fine race. Though not 
tall they are well-built and broad-chested, and their spare, 
lithe frames, which never grow fat, are capable of a strength 
and an endurance which it were hard to match in any other 
labouring class. The face of the fellah is a fine oval, with 
a broad and marked brow, and a brown complexion which 
becomes a deep bronze in the more southern parts of the 
country. His brilliant black eyes, with their thick lashes, 
would be very conspicuous if he had not contracted the 
habit of keeping them half-shut on account of the glare of 
the sunlight. The mouth is well formed and adorned with 
exquisite teeth, but the lips are a little thick ; the nose is 
straight, with wide nostrils ; the hair scant and curly ; the 
skull peculiarly large and solid. The whole head is shaved, 
with the exception of a tuft which is left on the crown, to 
serve (it is said) as a handle to carry it by after decapitation ; 
but the moustache never feels the razor, and the beard is 
seldom shaved, except a small space on either side under 
the corners of the mouth. The dress consists in a smock 
of blue cotton (in the Delta) or of brown woollen stuff (in 
the Nile valley) under which well-to-do peasants wear 
drawers, but many have only a loin-cloth. The head is 
protected by a white cap covered with a red fez (or tarbush) 
round which a long strip of muslin is rolled to make a 
turban ; but the poorer labourers cannot afford the turban, 
and have to content themselves with the tarbush, which is 
handed down from father to son till there is little of its red- 
ness left J and the very poorest do not even possess this an- 




m •^, 



t 



si 

D 
O 



^1:13' 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 43 

cestral treasure, but have to manage with the thin cotton 
cap alone. 

The women are very slender and beautifully formed, and 
their skin is more delicate than the men's. Few lovelier 
women can be seen than the Egyptian peasant girl of six- 
teen returning from her usual errand of fetching water from 
the river or the village well ; her lithe form suffers no un- 
gainly strain from the weight of the great water-jar she car- 
ries on her head — balanced so securely that it scarcely needs 
the steadying of the shapely brown arm — and she walks 
erect with a noble carriage. She needs no artifice to en- 
hance the charm of her form, and the fascination of the 
beautiful eyes that the face-veil does not conceal ; yet noth- 
ing will do but she must spoil her warm skin with tattooing 
on chin, hands and arms, and between the breasts, put rings 
in her ears and her nose, and hang herself about with tawdry 
ornaments. Almost the only garment of the peasant woman 
is a blue cotton shirt or gown, smaller than the men's 
smock, with a head-veil hanging over the head behind, 
which can be drawn over the face at sight of a man ; but 
some wear the ordinary black face-veil, used by the upper 
classes. In the southern provinces", the brown woollen ma- 
terial takes the place of the blue cotton, as men's smocks, 
and the shape of the garment alters. Still higher up the 
river, even the single shirt is abandoned. 

" The fellah, at least of the poorer class, is almost ex- 
clusively a vegetarian, and pastures his tongue mostly on 
coarse, heavy, and raw substances. With his black millet- 



44 EGYPT 

bread or his cakes of unleavened flour, he eats salt, caraway, 
garlic, onions and other vegetables, raw and uncooked, by- 
preference, and in addition the many kinds of fruits he pos- 
sesses, especially dates and melons. With his sharp teeth, 
he eats into the rind of the dom-nut, and the stems of the 
sugar-cane, which lacerate the gums of a person unaccus- 
tomed to them, and make them bleed, and he chews grain, 
and legumes slightly roasted, maize, beans, chick-peas and 
half-ripe wheat. He does not allow himself many dainties; 
any of this sort that he has, such as milk, eggs, fowls, 
pigeons, or cattle, he sells, though on a few days of the 
year, at family or religious feasts, when impelled by religion, 
he does allow himself the indulgence of a good piece of 
mutton. Spirituous liquors he never tastes. It is only with 
tobacco that he is not niggardly. A wife and family are 
quite indispensable to him ; he would rather starve and allow 
those dependent on him to starve also than remain unmar- 
ried. From the political pressure weighing him down, he 
cannot easily raise himself from his condition of poverty, 
and from indolence he has no great desire to do so (most of 
the fellahs are mere day-labourers or tenants, not land-own- 
ers) yet from his contentment and domesticity he is always 
merry, he chats, jokes, and sings, is healthy, and incredibly 
efficient and assiduous in working " (Klunzinger). 

The townspeople are naturally of a more mixed race 
than the fellahin. Nevertheless, the Egyptian townsman 
is at bottom very like his country neighbour ; he is only a 
little more polished and plausible, and rather more of an 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 45 

Arab in manner and character. In occupation, he is of 
course in complete contrast, for, instead of an active life in 
the fields, he sits smoking in his shop, carrying on those in- 
terminable bargainings which are the indispensable condi- 
tion of business in the East. There are some town occu- 
pations, however, which rival field-work in activity 5 such 
as the laborious trade of the water-carrier, or the unwearied 
bowing of the porter's broad shoulders, the restless haggling 
of the public broker, the perpetual run of the swift-footed 
sais or groom who clears the way for his master when he 
rides abroad, and the long, hot, dusty walks of the various 
hawkers who perambulate the streets shouting or chanting 
the quality of their stock in quaint, allusive phrases. Thus 
the seller of lupins cries : " How sweet is the little offspring 
of the river ! " because the lupin is soaked in the Nile to 
prepare it for eating ; and the hawker of sour limes sings : 
" God make them light, O limes ! " — meaning your purse ; 
and the refreshing watermelon is announced in the words 
*' O consoler of the embarrassed, O pips ! " 

The commoner order of townspeople dress like the 
fellahin j but, as the social scale is ascended, the material 
and number of the garments improve, and the well-to-do 
Egyptian wears, instead of the peasant's smock, a white 
shirt (of silk, or cotton, or muslin) next the skin, and over 
it a long striped silk and cotton robe called kaftan, resem- 
bling a dressing-gown bound at the waist with a thick girdle. 
Out-of-doors, a cloth coat (gibbeh) is put on over the kaftan, 
and in cold weather a vest is worn over the shirt. The 



46 EGYPT 

ladies of the upper classes, when they go out, disguise 
themselves in immense folds of black silk ; and gentlemen 
and officers wear the Turkish jacket and loose trousers. 
Government officials have adopted the European dress, to 
their intense discomfort. 

In upper Egypt, the life of the ordinary inhabitant of the 
towns is passed in a simple and uniform manner. Before 
sunrise he leaves his couch, performs the morning ablu- 
tions enjoined by his religion and repeats his early prayer. 
He then drinks his cup of coffee, and smokes his pipe 
either at home or in the public coffee-house. His break- 
fast, which he takes after the coffee (though sometimes 
before it) consists of the remains of his meal of the previous 
evening, or of cakes and milk, or for a trifle he procures 
from the market the ever-ready national dish oi ful^ that is, 
stewed beans. He then engages in his vocations, buys, 
sells, writes, works, or moves about, all in the most com- 
fortable, quiet and deliberate manner. Even before the 
midday call from the minaret he has made his preparations 
for the hour of prayer, and after the performance of his 
devotions he returns home and enjoys his simple dinner. 
This consists for the most part only of bread with fruits or 
with white country cheese, milk, salt fish, or molasses (the 
so-called black honey). 

He takes care not to make his midday sleep too short, 
especially in summer, and he lies down in his house or in 
his shop, in the cafe, or in any shady spot in the open air ;; 
at this time the streets and markets become deserted. Not 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 47 

till well through the afternoon does he again move, when 
he begins the second portion of the day as he did the first, 
with ablutions, prayers and coffee, afterwards bestirring 
himself with some energy to make up during the remainder 
of the day for the time he has dreamed and trifled away. 
For this remainder is but short, and, with the last rays of 
the setting sun, the call from the minaret is again heard, 
the trader shuts his shop, the workman flings away his 
tools, the scholar, the writer, and the man of learning shut 
their books. This dawdling habit arises more from the 
fact that little trade or industry exists ; and the want of a 
regular weekly day of rest is also not without blame. 

After his evening devotions, the dweller in the town 
moves to his house where the supper is awaiting him. At 
this meal, which is generally the principal meal of the day, 
he quite acts the gourmand. His wife brings it to him on a 
round wooden board elevated on pieces of wood or short 
feet ; among richer people, a shield-like metal plate is used 
instead. The basis of the meal is bread made of wheat or 
millet flour, or hot unleavened cakes — of which he devours 
incredible quantities — baked over a fire of dung. His wife 
has also boiled or fried for him a fish with onions and oil, 
or there lies in the pot a young pigeon, or a fowl, the juice 
of which tastes excellently when the cakes are dipped in it. 
Sometimes also, a small piece of mutton, buffalo, soaked 
bamiyehs^ or the viscous-juiced, spinach-like moluchieh are 
cooked. These however are the more expensive viands, 
and in the evening also people on ordinary occasions are 



48 EGYPT 

satisfied with the ful^ which has become so national a dish. 
Other dishes are such as lentils boiled in water without 
fleshj/tt/ with moluchieh^ a. thick flour paste, coarsely-ground 
barley or wheat, a cake made with butter, an omelette, fruit, 
roasted grain, salt and caraway, and especially raw onions. 
Whenever it is possible, two or three kinds of dishes must 
be on the table, and the inhabitant of the town tastes of 
them indiscriminately. 

" After the evening meal, our citizen either remains at 
home enjoying a dignified ease in his harem, or he takes up 
his position before his house, stretched out in the dust of 
the street, or squatting amidst a knot of peaceful neigh- 
bours ; less frequently he visits the cafe again, or calls on 
a friend in his house or courtyard. The light of the moon 
and stars suffices, or, if in winter they must retreat into the 
dark chamber, the weak glimmer of an oil-lamp. In the 
country nothing is known of nocturnal labours either of 
hand or head even among the learned, and the many blind 
and blear-eyed people that here wander about have not con- 
tracted their ailments through overstraining their eyes. As 
to-day is, so is to-morrow, and the most momentous events 
passing in the great world here make on most people no 
impression whatever. For it is only a very few that receive 
a newspaper, and still fewer understand it, partly because 
its language is too fine, and therefore not suited to the mass, 
partly because the necessary previous knowledge of every 
kind is absent. It is only the most urgent necessity that 
causes the citizen to take a journey, and when he does 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 49 

travel he takes a pilgrimage to Mecca, or, at most, goes to 
some other country in which Islam prevails " (Klunzinger). 

The Egyptian social system is based upon the laws of 
the Koran, and is similar to that of all other Mohammedan 
countries. With the exception of the Turkish official 
caste, and some of the Europeans, who settle in Cairo, the 
polygamous Egyptian is every whit as moral as his English 
or French contemporary. Polygamy is much more a theo- 
retical than a practical institution. Expensive and domestic 
discomfort are enough to account for the fact that although 
he is allowed by the religious law four wives, not one 
Egyptian in twenty has even two. The real blot on the 
Mohammedan system is the facility which is permitted in 
divorce. The mere words " Thou art divorced ! " uttered 
in anger or by accident, suffice to separate a woman from 
her husband ; and after two such separations and reconcilia- 
tions, they cannot again live together until the revolting 
law has been fulfilled which enacts that a woman triply di- 
vorced must be married to another husband and divorced 
by him before she can go back to her first husband. Dur- 
ing separation, and for a certain period after divorce, the 
woman is entitled to support from her husband ; and up to 
the age of seven she keeps the custody of her children. 

The demoralizing effects of this looseness of the mar- 
riage tie are easily understood ; yet it is difficult to see how 
some such means of escape from a miserable union could 
be omitted in a system wherein the wife and husband do 
not see each other's faces till after the wedding, and know 



50 EGYPT 

nothing at first hand of each other's dispositions. The poor 
little child of twelve or fifteen — many Egyptian girls are 
mothers at fourteen — is handed over to her stranger bride- 
groom, often little older than herself, as soon as he has paid 
the stipulated dowry, and the bargain is celebrated with 
much ceremony and many superstitious rites ; after which 
the childish couple are left to begin life together as best 
they can, in total ignorance of each other's characters and 
tastes. Naturally, cases of mutual dislike are not rare, and 
disastrous consequences would follow if incompatible 
couples were irrevocably tied together. 

Nevertheless there is a very real honest hearty love 
among Egyptian husbands and wives which may contrast 
favourably with the family devotion of most countries. 
And it must be remembered that if the husband does di- 
vorce his wife, at least he is scrupulously true to her while 
she is his wife, and if he takes another wife beside her, he 
will be true to them two. There is no promiscuous im- 
morality among the Egyptians. 

Education is almost unknown among the women of 
Egypt, and even religion is regarded as superfluous. It is 
a popular fallacy to attribute to Islam the doctrine that 
women have no souls; but it is certain that modem custom 
ignores any such possessions ; a woman is not encouraged 
to go to the mosque nor even to pray at home. Appar- 
ently the exacting ritual prescribed for the men is enough 
for both ; but it is a pity that godliness should be a neces- 
sary preliminary to cleanliness in the East, for the women 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 51 

by ignoring the one neglect the other, and their persons are 
too often entomological museums. 

In spite of a vicious training, seclusion, and no educa- 
tion, it cannot be said that the women of Egypt lead an 
unhappy life. A middle-class Egyptian wife does very 
much the same things that the wife of an ordinary English 
man of business does. There is cooking, washing, mend- 
ing, housekeeping in general to be done, and it is the wife 
who has to do or direct it all. Among the peasantry, the 
woman often works as hard as the man ; she is even put to 
such labour as bricklaying ; but she always does her work 
cheerfully, and never complains of the weight of the water 
jars she carries from the well, or the heat of the stove 
where she cooks her husband's supper. A good deal of 
her time is spent in needlework, embroidery, and spinning ; 
and these domestic employments are deemed the most 
praiseworthy occupations for a woman . " an hour at the 
distaff," said the prophet, "is better than a year's worship." 
She has her amusements also, and can sing and play and 
dance sometimes, though she prefers having her singing 
and dancing done for her. She is fond of gossip, and 
makes and receives prodigious calls. The women of a set 
have their private reunions^ to which no husband of them 
all dare enter ; and the proceedings are childishly joyous 
and boisterous. So far from disliking their enforced seclu- 
sion, they regard it as a proof of their husband's love; and 
unusual freedom is taken to indicate carelessness and 
neglect on the husband's part. Egyptian wives, however. 



52 EGYPT 

are under less restraint than most Muslini harems ; and the 
peasant women use very little concealment and even neglect 
the drawing of the veil altogether, though in the towns it is 
not unusual to see women carefully hiding their faces with 
a veil, whilst the greater part of their persons is wholly 
exposed. 

The children naturally learn little worth learning from 
the women among whom their early years are spent. In 
truth it is very little of any kind that they learn at home, 
except manners and the rudimentary forms of religion. In 
manners, the Egyptian boy of the middle and upper classes 
is singularly graceful and courteous, and his deference to 
his father and elders is a striking feature in Egyptian family 
life. No well-bred son will sit or smoke in his father's 
presence without leave ; and if there are guests it is the 
son's duty to serve them at dinner, which he does with the 
finest courtesy and self-possession. In spite of a certain 
formality in their relations, parents and children are gener- 
ally strongly bound together in love ; and no parent fears 
poverty or an infirm old age whilst there is a son to work 
for him. 

The country life of Egypt is even more quiet and mon- 
otonous than rural existence at home. The people have, 
indeed, their festivals, but they are not held with the pomp 
and display which characterize the same feasts in the cap- 
ital. The loud laughter caused by the antics of buff*oons 
and mimics, and the excitement aroused by the perform- 
ances of the dancing-girls constitute the peasant's delirious 



THE FELLAHIN AND DAILY LIFE 53 

joys ; and near the ruins of the great temple of Luxor one 
may still see the lineal descendants of the rude entertain- 
ments which delighted the Pharaohs and their subjects. 
But the even tenor of the peasant's life suffers few rude 
shocks, and is seldom upset by gaiety or excitement. The 
festivities of marriages and births and the saints' days form 
the chief varieties in the quiet routine of leisurely work. 
Even the Bedawis, whose tribes fringe the cultivated lands, 
and whose nomad life has so many romantic associations, 
enjoy but little variety of scene or occupation. Looking 
after sheep and cattle, diversified with petty larceny and 
occasional raids on villages, probably forms as monotonous 
an existence as sowing and reaping crops or drilling pipe- 
stems. But the Bedawis are not Egyptians, tTiough they 
form a picturesque feature in the sights of Egypt. 



THE COPTS 

DR. C. B. KLUNZINGER 



1 



■^HE Coptic Church, a heretical offshoot of the 
Greek, formed in the Fifth Century under the 
Emperor Marcianus after the Council of Chal- 
cedon, also called the Monophysite or Jacobite Church, is 
found only in Egypt, Abyssinia, and to a smaller extent in 
Syria. It has preserved many echoes or relics of ancient 
Christianity, perhaps more than other churches. It has 
maintained itself to the present day in spite of the most bit- 
ter persecutions carried on through many centuries. Mil- 
lions of Copts have indeed gradually passed over to Islam ; 
but those who have remained faithful compel our esteem 
by the firmness of their faith and by their endurance. The 
church is entirely independent of the state, and is subject 
to a patriarch, who is likewise head of the Abyssinian 
Church. Formerly, the Mohammedan rulers attempted to 
force their submission by oppression, but they never made 
any direct efforts to convert them. But now there is no 
greater example of toleration to be seen anywhere than that 
which is exhibited on the part of the government in all 
these lands. 

The Coptic priests, whose dress does not differ from that 

L 




< 
o 
w 



THE COPTS 55 

of the layman, but is always, including the turban, of a 
dark colour, actually live in apostolic poverty, having no 
regular salary, and being entirely dependent for support 
upon their congregation. Articles of food are sent to their 
house, and they get a little money on occasion of baptisms, 
marriages and funerals. Like the Moslem kadi^ they have 
various judicial functions to discharge, especially in con- 
nection vi^ith marriages and inheritances. The want of 
money makes them very ready to accept equivocal presents, 
and they are easily induced by such a gift to remit a i^w 
penances, which usually consist in prayer and fasting. In 
Cairo, many of them act as the part of match-makers, be- 
trothing Coptic girls, though not without the consent of 
their parents, after the manner of the Moslems, by proc- 
lamation, which is totally contrary to their laws. The 
Copts show great respect to their priests, outwardly at any 
rate. They kiss their hands to them j but at bottom they 
seem to hold many of the priests in very little esteem, no 
doubt on account of such malpractices as that above men- 
tioned. There is a seminary for Christian priests, but of 
the higher theological knowledge, or even of general cul- 
ture, there is no trace, hardly even among the bishops. In- 
tending priests may be married before they are consecrated; 
but after consecration, if the wife dies, they are not allowed 
to marry again. The higher clergy are required to remain 
unmarried. 

The Copts read the Gospels, which, like the Mussul- 
mans with the Koran, they also outwardly hold in great 



56 EGYPT 

reverence, and by which they swear. They baptize chil- 
dren by immersion, have monasteries, and practice auricular 
confession and worship of the Virgin. The chief expres- 
sion of their Christianity consists in fasting. The Pope is 
their detestation. Besides a faint resemblance in feature, 
and many customs still prevalent among the Egyptians gen- 
erally, the Copt, the true descendant of the great nation of 
the Retu, has inherited little from his remote forefathers. 
In fact, he turns yellow when we tell him about the splen- 
dour and magnificence of the land of Kemi. He knows 
the idolatrous and accursed race of the children of Pharaoh 
only from the opprobrious epithets which his enemies, the 
Moslems, bestow upon him, and from the representations 
inspired by national hatred given of them by the lawgiver 
of the Jews. The bad repute in which the excellent and 
high-minded Retu stand among the JVIoslems can be ex- 
plained only by the degenerate effeminacy of their descend- 
ants at the time of Mohammed. 

As for the modern Copt, he has become from head to 
foot, in manners, language and spirit, a Moslem, however 
unwilling he may be to recognize that fact. His dress is 
like that of the rest of the people, except that he prefers 
darker materials. The black turban, formerly the brand of 
the Christians (who were obliged to wear a black or blue 
turban to distinguish them from the Moslems) is now vol- 
untarily and gladly worn by them, and especially by the 
Coptic scribes, as a mark of honour. The Copt smiles at 
the Moslem, who, in going through his prayers, turns his 



THE COPTS 57 

face towards Mecca, while he himself, with his face turned 
to Jerusalem, mumbles out psalms by the yard in a regular 
paternoster gallop. Unabashed, he pollutes the virgin air 
of the Mohammedan great month of Ramadan with clouds 
of smoke from his pipe, but crucifies his own flesh during 
three-quarters of the year with the scanty juices of vege- 
table, fluviatlle and marine aliments. Like the Moslem 
and the Jew, he has a horror of blood and swine's flesh, 
but in addition has an equal abhorrence of camel's flesh, 
which the Bedouin Mohammed permitted. He clings with 
excessive tenacity to the privileges he enjoys in the case of 
his favourite spirit. He never tastes his evening meal until 
his mind is clouded by the vapours of this water of life, 
which he prepares himself from dates. To this spirit alone 
he owes the rotundity of his body, and perhaps the existence 
of his race, which would otherwise have died out long ago 
under the regimen of peas, beans and fish, without fat or 
butter, which form almost his whole diet during the seasons 
of fasting. For the noble juice of the grape, the descendant 
of the ancient Egyptians has no taste. The vine is much 
cultivated in Egypt, and the grapes are excellent, but are 
only used for eating. The drinking of spirits is a charac- 
teristic sign of the degradation of the descendants of the 
wine-loving Retu. 

The Copt as a good Christian must live till his death a 
strict monogamist, but, like the Moslem, is allowed to taste 
the joys of married life in early youth. His spouse is gen- 
erally chosen for him by his father from among his own 



58 EGYPT 

near relations, and when he has married her he closely se- 
cludes her from the male world without. Like the early 
Christians, he loves to pray in domestic association with his 
fellow-Christians, and seals the prayer with a fraternal 
pressure of the hand. He does not readily allow his Chris- 
tian brethren, to whatever confession they may belong, to 
suffer want; but his love for his neighbour is generally con- 
fined to those who own the name of Christian. In proof 
of his Christianity, he will often turn up his sleeves, 
and show a blue cross indelibly tattooed on his arm. The 
Copt is fanatical, servile and avaricious, but more ac- 
cessible to enlightenment than the Koran-bound Mos- 
lem. 

A Coptic meal. — We spent the evening in the house of a 
Coptic scribe. He invited us in a very hesitating manner, 
for it happened to be a period of fasting, which is during 
nearly half the year. On our entering the house, the females 
are warned and get out of sight as in the house of the 
Moslems. We must seat ourselves either in the reception 
room, or on the terrace or verandah on a carpet on the 
floor, where some guests of the same race and religion as 
our host have already seated themselves. The proceedings 
are pretty much the same as those we formerly witnessed 
in the house of the Moslem ; but the stomach is not imme- 
diately satisfied, being treated for several hours with date- 
spirit, which we get to drink in small bottles like medicine 
bottles. Our thirst is kept alive by all sorts of provoca- 
tives, such as roasted chick-peas or maize, salted tirmis (or 



THE COPTS 59 

lupines), hazelnuts and sweetmeats, while we smoke and 
talk. The conversation turns chiefly on religion, which in 
the East takes the place of politics. 

The preparation of the liquor just mentioned may be 
taken as a characteristic example of Arab industry. After 
the dates have lain in a suitable quantity of water for 
weeks, during which period they have been stirred several 
times every day, and have thus undergone a process of 
fermentation, the resulting liquor is distilled. An ordinary 
copper caldron with a narrow mouth forms the retort, 
which stands on a few stones placed round the fire. The 
head of the still is formed by a large earthenware jar, such 
as is used for carrying water, the handles of which have 
been sawn off, and which has been cut away at the mouth 
so as to fit that of the caldron exactly. Towards the top a 
round hole has been pierced in the side of the jar, and in 
this hole a straight hollow piece of dry sugar-cane is in- 
serted horizontally instead of the ordinary worm. Near 
the extremity, this horizontal piece is intersected by a 
similar vertical piece, the lower end of which enters the 
receiver, which is a copper vessel of moderate height closed 
at the top by a pad. The receiver is kept cool by being 
placed in a wide vessel sunk in the earth and filled with 
cold water which is constantly renewed. The gaps and 
joints are stopped with rags and dough. The pieces of 
cane especially are wound round with rags several times. 
A good deal of the spirit of course escapes. The joints 
cannot be often enough cemented. There is always some 



6o EGYPT 

new hole out of which the spirit bursts, not unfrequently 
taking fire in so doing. 

At last, when the guests have imbibed a sufficient quan- 
tity of the spirit, and feel themselves in the happy state of 
mind and body which they call kef^ the eatables are served. 
They consist of steamed marsh-beans, lentils, preserved 
olives, a syrup of sesamum, fish and several sweetmeats, 
fruits and vegetables, such as radishes (the leaves of which 
are preferred to the rather insipid root), raw purple-red car- 
rots, and whatever other green vegetables the season pro- 
duces. But all animal food, except fish, and even such 
animal products as butter, milk and eggs, are rigorously 
eschewed. Soon after the meal is over the party breaks up, 
having consumed a great part of the evening with gossiping 
and disputing, in the course of which the standpoint of most 
of those who took part in the discussion had become far 
from clear. We return to our abode in the opposite con- 
dition to that in which we had left the Moslem's feast the 
evening before — with empty stomach but overburdened brain. 



THE MOSLEM WOMEN 

EDWARD WILLIAM LANE 

FROM the age of about fourteen to eighteen or 
twenty, the women are generally models of beauty 
in body and limbs; and in countenance most of 
them are pleasing, and many exceedingly lovely ; but soon 
after they have attained their perfect growth, they rapidly 
decline ; the bosom early loses all its beauty, acquiring, 
from the relaxing nature of the climate, an excessive length 
and flatness in its forms, even while the face retains its 
full charms ; and though in most other respects, time does 
not commonly so soon nor so much deform them, at the 
age of forty it renders many, who in earlier years possessed 
considerable attractions, absolutely ugly. In the Egyptian 
females the forms of womanhood begin to develop them- 
selves about the ninth or tenth year ; at the age of fifteen 
or sixteen they generally attain their highest degree of 
perfection. With regard to their complexions, the same 
remarks apply to them as the men, with only this difference, 
that their faces, being generally veiled when they go 
abroad, are not quite so much tanned as those of the men. 
They are characterized, like the men, by a fine oval 
countenance ; though in some instances it is rather broad. 
The eyes, with very few exceptions, are black, large, and 



62 EGYPT 

of a long almond form, with long and beautiful lashes, 
and an exquisitely soft bewitching expression : eyes more 
beautiful can hardly be conceived : their charming effect is 
much heightened by the concealment of the other features 
(however pleasing the latter may be) and is rendered still 
more striking by a practice universal among the females 
of the higher and middle classes, and very common among 
those of the lower orders, which is that of blackening the 
edge of the eyelids both above and below the eye with a 
black powder called kohl. The custom of thus ornament- 
ing the eyes prevailed among both sexes in Egypt in very 
ancient times. The eyes of the Egyptian women are 
generally the most beautiful of their features. Counte- 
nances altogether handsome are far less common among 
this race than handsome figures. The nose is generally 
straight ; and the lips are mostly rather fuller than those 
of the men, without in the least degree partaking of the 
Negro character : though in many instances, an approach 
to the Ethiopian type is observable in the mouth as well 
as the other features. The hair is of that deep glossy 
black which best suits all but fair complexions : in some 
instances, it is rather coarse and crisp, but never woolly. 

The females of the higher and middle classes, and many 
of the poorer, stain parts of their hands and feet (which are, 
with very few exceptions, beautifully formed) with the 
leaves of the henna-tree, which impart a yellowish-red, or 
deep-orange colour. Many thus dye only the nails of the 
fingers and toes j others extend the dye as high as the 




PALM-TREES AND NATIVE WOMEN 



THE MOSLEM WOMEN 63 

first joint of each finger and toe ; some also make a 
stripe along the next row of joints ; and there are several 
other fanciful modes of applying the henna ; but the most 
common practice is to dye the tips of the fingers and toes 
as high as the first joint, and the whole of the inside of the 
hand and the sole of the foot ; adding, though not always, 
the stripe above mentioned along the middle joints of the 
fingers, and a similar stripe a little above the toes. 

Among the females of the lower orders, in the country 
towns and villages of Egypt, and among the same classes 
in the metropolis, but in a less degree, prevails a custom 
somewhat similar to that above described. It consists in 
making indelible marks of a blue or greenish hue upon the 
face and other parts, or, at least, upon the front of the chin, 
and upon the back of the right hand, and often also upon 
the left hand, the right arm, or both arms, the feet, the 
middle of the bosom and the forehead. The operation is 
performed with several needles (generally seven) tied to- 
gether : with these the skin is pricked in the desired pattern, 
and some indigo is rubbed into the punctures. It is gener- 
ally performed at the age of about five or six years, and by 
gipsy-women. The term applied to it is dakk. Most of 
the females of the higher parts of Upper Egypt (who are of 
a very dark complexion) for the purpose of making their 
teeth glisten, tattoo their lips instead of the parts above 
mentioned ; thus converting their natural colour to a dull 
bluish hue, which, to the eye of a stranger, is extremely 
displeasing. 



VrOMEl^ AND THE INTERIOR OF THE 
HOUSE 

DR. C. B. KLUNZINGER 

THOUGH the members of the opposite sex cer- 
tainly do not groan and languish under the burden 
of their daily labours, yet they do not, as the 
common descriptions of harem life lead us to believe, re- 
cline the livelong day on the soft divan enjoying the dolce 
far nienU, adorned with gold and jewels, and smoking. 
People fall into the mistake of comparing the life of the 
women of the middle ranks with that of those that occupy 
the harems of the great. The care of house and family 
lies much more heavily upon the women here, and there is 
enough to attend to even if, being assisted by female slaves, 
as is the case in the higher ranks, they have not to put to 
their hands themselves, and confine themselves only to giv- 
ing orders. Cooking, baking, sewing, embroidering, wash- 
ing and scouring must be carried on, and children must be 
attended to here as well as elsewhere — there is no reading 
nor pianoforte playing however. 

Before sunrise, women and children are already awake 
and moving, many indeed under cover of the dark gray 
dawn proceed to the river to bathe and wash themselves. 
The toilette, however, is not usually the first thing that 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 65 

demands attention, the kitchen must first be attended to in 
order to let the husband get away to his occupation. A 
complete toilette including combing and plaiting the hair is 
not in many cases indulged in even by ladies of the better 
class. In this way time and trouble are spared, but a 
certain class of vermin are left almost unmolested, and 
establish themselves often so firmly among the black locks 
of the Eastern beauties that they cannot be extirpated not- 
withstanding the raids that are made upon them from time 
to time — even with the application of gray mercurial oint- 
ment. As a rule the toilette is associated with a bath to 
which praiseworthy enjoyment high and low are attached, 
whether it be taken in the public bathing establishment, in 
the river, the sea, or at home by means of a shallow tub, and 
by pouring warm water over the body and scrubbing it with 
soap and date bast. In the public baths certain hours or 
days are set apart for the fair sex, and here many women 
spend half days bathing, adorning themselves, smoking and 
gossiping. At these times no male, not even a eunuch, 
would dare set foot in the apartments. 

In other respects also the women are by no means robbed 
of social pleasures. They visit each other often enough, if 
possible, early in the morning, and are wont to remain half 
a day, a whole day, or even several days, although both 
parties may be in the same town. They smoke, drink 
coffee, gossip, show their ornaments and finery, tell stories 
and wonderful tales, sew, embroider (but do not knit), sing 
and dance, or better, make some one sing and dance before 



66 EGYPT 

them (since a well-conducted lady ought neither to be seen 
nor heard, and therefore should not sing), laugh and make 
merry — in short the harem so greatly pitied elsewhere 
enjoys life, but on the sole condition that no man be pres- 
ent. They are less often allowed to take a walk in the 
open air, some — and this is considered a great virtue — 
never leave the house after their marriage. Their lady 
friends come to visit them instead, and as almost every 
house in these regions has its courtyard or terrace, women 
are by no means kept out of the open air. Moslem women 
are generally excused from the burdensome prayers of the 
men, and pious or even hypocritical women are in the 
Moslem female world a great rarity ; indeed they scarcely 
know the most important doctrines of their religion. Piety 
in them is even looked upon with dislike. 

At midday the husband always eats alone, or with his boys, 
or guests. Immediately afterwards, however, the wife again 
comes into honour, since her lord likes to enjoy his siesta 
in the chambers of the harem. After sunset, no respecta- 
ble woman must show herself outside the house, even 
though veiled and attended, and now, or some hours later, 
the husband again repairs to the sacred apartments denied 
to all but himself. 

In the feeling of the Moslem, the harems are not citadels 
of jealousy, in which the husband keeps penned up a con- 
siderable flock of luxurious indolent beauties. The 
women's apartments are rather places sacred and inviolable, 
where the harem (that is " the prohibited," the women, the 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 67 

family, and therefore the husband's dearest treasure) must 
be guarded from profane glances and frivolous influences. 
As above remarked they are by no means imprisoned, vi^ith 
the exception perhaps of the women of the highest ranks ; 
they are merely kept and brought up, so that they may shut 
themselves off by their veils both in the house and outside 
from all strange men : among themselves they enjoy the 
freest intercourse. In consequence of being thus shut up, 
the Oriental women have almost come to form a separate 
caste, whose laws the men have to respect. This caste has 
its female sheikhs, for which dignity the midwives and 
bathing women in particular are selected, has its medical 
art, its songs and music, its fashions, almost its own lan- 
guage, indeed, at least so far as expressions are concerned, 
and unlimited rule over the little children belonging to it. 
From its meetings even the master of the house is inexor- 
ably excluded. Of course, according to the law, the 
woman is the servant of the man ; she has not the right to 
sit at a common table with her husband ; on the street he 
shyly avoids his veiled spouse; she is even treated by re- 
ligion as an object of pollution, contact with which de- 
mands a full bath before the believer can again perform his 
devotions ; and when mention is made of her, it is usually 
accompanied, as in the case of other unclean things, with a 
" saving your presence " [essak Allah^ literally " God honour 
you ! ") j with regard to inheritance she is regarded as only a 
half person ; she is generally excluded from the mosque, and 
as a rule is not required to pray, or to know more than is 



68 EGYPT 

necessary for housekeeping. Still, there are plenty of men 
who are under petticoat government. The wife is signifi- 
cantly called sitt, that is " mistress," and even the husband 
calls her so. The wife has even duties to perform towards 
the outer world in so far as she has to manage the housekeep- 
ing. When, in the absence of her husband, a guest has to 
be entertained, meals are served up in the name of the wife 
through her servants or children, she inquires after the name 
and health of the guest, but she herself does not appear. 

We meet a well-dressed native gentleman with whom we 
are acquainted, and are soon engaged in a discursive con- 
versation with him which it seems desirable to carry further 
undisturbed and in comfort. Tefaddal (" If you please ") 
he says to us, shaking and rattling the bar of a gigantic 
wooden lock on the door of a handsome house. While we 
stand hesitating, he takes us kindly by the hand, and half- 
pulls us over the threshold of the small middle door that is 
just opened from behind. *' Your faces ! Cover your- 
selves ! " he calls out, gently detaining us, and clapping his 
hands, as he enters alone the sanctuary of the house. We 
hear some half-uttered cries of fear, whimpering children's 
voices, whispered scolding and smothered giggling. In a 
{^^ minutes, the inmates of the harem, thus taken by sur- 
prise, have fled to their hiding-places, and our host invites 
us to step into the interior of the house. We follow him 
and passing along a narrow lobby and round a corner that 
prevents us from seeing further, enter a spacious courtyard. 

This open airy space and the half-covered-in sheds and 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 69 

porticoes {sufa) open on the side next it, serve, at least 
among the middle and lower classes of the provincial popu- 
lation, as the general family-room. Here both women and 
children, in company with sheep, goats, fowls and pigeons, 
spend the greater part of their time. Here the wife who 
has to work takes her meals with her children, eating the 
scraps which her husband — and his friends, if he has had 
guests — has left over ; here is the sitting-room for the fe- 
male gossips of the town ; here the merry daughters and 
their playmates sing their songs to the accompaniment of 
the inevitable darahuka (a kind of small drum). Among 
the richer classes the date-palm or something green is 
planted in the courtyard where possible. 

One of the side rooms is occupied by the kitchen which 
is almost wall-less towards the court. The fireplace is 
either built of clay, the favourite form being that of a low 
stair with holes containing the fire let into the top ; or all 
the needs of the household are satisfied year after year by a 
fireplace of loose stones such as one might improvise in the 
open air when travelling. The fire must be low, since the 
women squat before it when cooking, as standing is highly 
unpleasant to them. The use of any kind of stove does 
not seem to be appreciated anywhere. In cooking, a cop- 
per pot, withdut a handle, or an earthenware saucepan, is 
used ; and these vessels do not appear very secure as they 
sit half on, half off the fire. Only a portion of the fire 
above the gradually rising heap of ashes touches the pot 
and slowly cooks the victuals, a large square-shaped fan be- 



70 EGYPT 

ing used to make it burn more briskly ; the rest of the fire 
crackles merrily up without having any useful effect, and 
escapes outside by a small opening in the roof, which is 
formed of reeds and beams, black with soot, but apparently 
incombustible. The kitchen utensils, the plates and other 
dishes of tinned copper, wood, or earthenware, the iron 
pans, the wooden spoons and ladles, lie scattered over the 
earthen floor of the kitchen, or the earthen kneading trough 
and the copper washing tub, in shape like a gigantic plate, 
have been placed over them in order to preserve them from 
being meddled with by the sportive goats and pigeons. 
Those utensils not intended for immediate use are placed 
upon an open shelf, or put away in a picturesque clay cup- 
board. The turbid muddy water of the Nile is kept in a 
tall cylindrical vessel of clay hung upon a frame, rounded 
buckets of wood or leather, or tin-plate mugs being dipped 
into this vessel when necessary ; sometimes also it is kept 
in large narrow-mouthed heavy pitchers with handles 
(balas). A small portion trickles pure and clear, drop by 
drop, through the pores of the cylindrical clay vessel into a 
vessel placed below it, in which if the whole does not stand 
in a close wooden box, ants, centipedes, perhaps also lizards 
and serpents, refresh and bathe themselves. The drinking 
water is poured into porous vessels of clay, in which it is 
cooled by the rapid evaporation that takes place from the 
dryness of the air. Water for washing is drawn up by a 
rope and bucket from wells in the court of no great depth, 
and is always brackish. After it has been used for washing 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 71 

utensils, or for cleansing the person, it is either poured out 
in the court, the soil of which soon absorbs it, or it is car- 
ried off by a deep narrow funnel-shaped sink. 

In the middle of the court rise cylindrical structures of 
clay, usually having rounded dome-shaped tops. These 
are intended for a pigeon-house, a house for fowls, an oven, 
a corn-store, or a pantry. The rooms situated on the 
ground floor in the irregular mass of buildings surrounding 
the court, and which are almost devoid of windows, serve 
for magazines, or in winter for warm sitting and sleeping 
rooms. In the clothes room the articles of dress hang 
openly upon cords, or are shut up in green boxes along 
with the ornaments and valuables. Wardrobes and chests 
of drawers are scarcely to be found, though wall-presses 
with doors are sometimes met with. In these doors, there- 
fore, the greatest disorder usually reigns. One of the 
rooms opening on the court, cleaner, more spacious and 
better lighted than the others, and usually fitted up with 
some elegance, is the mandara^ in which many receive 
their guests ; it is thought preferable, however, to have this 
room in an outer court, separate from the inner one where 
the women are. In the warm but dark sitting-room open- 
ing to the court the family circle gathers in the winter 
evenings before the open brazier, in the dim light of a cup- 
shaped hanging lamp of glass, or of a small shallow lamp 
of antique shape supplied with viscid, sooty oil, and stand- 
ing in a niche of the wall blackened by its smoke. In 
recent times, however, petroleum has been extensively in- 



^it EGYPT 

troduced. The sleeping rooms are almost entirely without 
windows, or if there are a few slits by way of window they 
are papered over to keep out the cold night air. The 
sleepers lie upon a portion of the earthen floor at the side 
of the room purposely raised above the rest, and on which 
a straw mat and a carpet are spread, or less frequently upon 
a wickerwork bedstead of palm branches ; such bedsteads, 
however, are quite useless in summer on account of the 
multitudes of bugs they harbour. Mosquito curtains and 
European bedsteads are sometimes found in the houses of 
the wealthy. The sleeper keeps half his clothes on, and 
in summer, therefore, requires no covering j in the colder 
nights he draws his ordinary wrapper (milayeh) over him, 
in winter he adds a woollen coverlet and a heavy quilted 
cotton one besides. So soon as the spring sun shines into 
these dark rooms their human occupants desert them to 
sleep in airier apartments or in the open air, and, wakening 
from their winter sleep, the army of bugs, flies, mosquitoes, 
fleas, lice, sugar-mites, ants, cockroaches, black beetles, 
scorpions, serpents, geckos, rats and mice celebrate their 
entry. 

Having cast upon all these surroundings a passing glance, 
we observe the restless and suspicious looks of the hos- 
pitable lord of the harem, who cannot attribute our survey 
to mere curiosity, and, at his earnest invitation, we mount 
the stair, which is jammed in between the walls, and con- 
sists of high steps covered with wood. We enter a well- 
lighted and spacious saloon, the ka^a called also tahaka^ as 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 73 

being in the first story, the salatnlik of the Turks. The 
floor consists of slabs of stone, or of a mass of clay and 
sand smoothed on the surface and hardened almost to the 
consistency of marble. The walls are whitewashed or 
show an earthy surface, have numerous niches, and are 
adorned with a few verses of the Koran, framed and glazed, 
here and there also with sheets of pictures of Arabic or 
Frankish production. The ceiling is composed of longi- 
tudinal and transverse layers of the midribs of palm fronds, 
with a coating of clay and lime above, and is supported by 
rough palm stems stretched across and bending downwards 
a considerable distance into the room. In the houses of 
wealthier persons we find an artistic panelled ceiling of 
mosaic. We are glad to observe there is no glass in the 
windows, and much prefer the cool air streaming in through 
the unglazed apertures, or conveyed down through the roof 
by the ventilator above. When it becomes too cool we 
have simply to close the shutters on the side next the wind. 
Across the far end of the room runs a low bench of 
stone or clay projecting several feet. Over the mattress 
that covers it, and is stufFed with wool or cotton, is spread 
a bright-coloured cloth or a carpet hanging down in folds 
in front. The cushions, which are of the same material 
and colour, but without any breach of propriety may be 
different, lie at fixed intervals free and resting against the 
wall, and thus the famous divan is formed. On the floor 
along the sides of the room, a splendid Persian carpet is 
spread over a straw mat, and on it next the wall are laid 



74 EGYPT 

cushions on which to recline. No other furniture or uten- 
sils are here except some water-coolers on window ledges, 
shelves, or niches in the wall, and religious manuscripts 
with black, red and gold letters. Our host invites us to 
seat ourselves beside him on the divan, but we cannot suc- 
ceed in finding a comfortable position, since the cushion 
behind lies too far backwards. To try to touch the cushion 
with our back, and then stretch our legs straight out does 
not seem either becoming or convenient ; the best we can 
do is to lay a cushion at our side and rest the forearm upon 
it. Our Oriental friend looks with a smile upon our 
straining trousers and our cumbersome boots, while he him- 
self, taking ofF his slippers, steps upon the soft couch, and 
crossing his legs, seats himself at the very back of the 
divan with the wall cushions to support him behind. In 
his hand he holds a fan, that is a flat piece of straw-plait 
with a handle and with this he fans himself and drives away 
the flies, the great plague of southern countries. 

After dinner our host conducts us up to the terrace or 
platform, which is half roofed in, seldom entirely roofless, 
open towards the north, and surrounded by walls. We 
express our desire to mount to the flat and entirely open 
roof above in order fully to enjoy the prospect ; but with 
this he does not comply, as he might thereby incur the dis- 
pleasure of his suspicious neighbours, whose harem might 
thus be exposed to our view. Besides, there is no stair 
leading up to it. We content ourselves, therefore, with 
the view from the terrace. Here in winter some little 



THE INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE 75 

sunny and sheltered spot may always be found where the 
limbs stiffened with the morning frost may be warmed and 
strengthened in the sun as he gradually rises in the heavens. 
And in the summer nights, what can be more agreeable than 
to stretch oneself out here on the soft couch of carpets, 
under the starry splendour of the southern sky, with a loving 
wife and merry crowd of children around ? 

The Harem. — There are not many upper rooms, but 
they are more pleasant and spacious than the holes of 
rooms on the ground floor. No second stair leads to a 
higher story. Those closely-grated windows that look into 
the court opposite to us conceal no doubt many of the 
secrets of the harem ; the occupants have certainly as- 
cended from the court and observed us, but we try in vain 
to obtain a sight of anything except darkness through the 
narrow openings between the crossed bars. A private stair 
leads from the court to these apartments to which no 
stranger can have access. 

The plan of the houses is naturally very different accord- 
ing to the taste and the means of the owner or builder. 
The above arrangement is in general the rule in Upper 
Egypt. The use to which the different apartments are 
put also varies according to taste and the season of the 
year ; at one time the door room, at another the mandara^ 
at another the tahaka or the sufa^ opening to the court 
being used as reception room ; while others allow no male 
guests into the house, but entertain them in their ware- 
house, situated elsewhere. 



COMMON USAGES OF SOCIETY 

EDWARD WILLIAM LANE 

f ■ ^HE Moslems are extremely formal and regular in 
I their social manners ; though generally very easy 
■"^ in their demeanour, and free in their conversation. 
Several of their most common usages are founded upon 
precepts of their religion, and distinguish them in society 
from all other people. Among these is their custom of 
greeting each other with the salutation of " Peace be on 
you ! " to which the proper and general reply is " On you 
be peace, and the mercy of God and His blessings ! " The 
giving it by one Moslem to another is a duty ; but one that 
may be omitted without sin ; the returning it is absolutely 
obligatory. Should a Moslem, however, thus salute, by 
mistake, a person not of the same faith, the latter should 
not return it ; and the former, on discovering his mistake, 
generally revokes his salutation ; so too he does sometimes 
if a Moslem refuse to return his salutation. The person 
riding should first salute him who is on foot, and he who 
passes by, the person or persons who are sitting down or 
standing still; and a small party, or one of such a party, 
should give the salutation to a large party ; and the young 
to the aged. As it is sufficient for one of a party to give^ 
so it is also for one only to return the salutation. It is re- 




< 
u 

< 
< 



COMMON USAGES OF SOCIETY 77 

quired, also, that a Moslem, when he enters a house, should 
salute the people of that house ; and that he should do the 
same when he leaves it. He should always salute first, 
and then talk. Among polite people it is customary for 
him who gives or returns the salutation to place his right 
hand upon his breast at the same time ; or to touch his 
lips, and then his forehead, or turban, with the same hand. 
This action is called teymeeneh. The latter mode of tey- 
meeneh, which is the more respectful, is often performed 
to a person of superior rank, not only at first, with the 
selam (or salutation of " Peace be on you "), but also fre- 
quently during a conversation, and in the latter case without 
the selam. 

A person of the lower orders, on approaching a superior, 
does not always give the selam but only performs this tey- 
meeneh ; and he shows his respect to a man of high rank by 
bending down his hand to the ground, and then putting it 
to his lips and forehead, without pronouncing the selam. It 
is a common custom, also, for a man to kiss the hand of a 
superior (generally on the back only, but sometimes on the 
back and front) and then to put it to his forehead, in order 
to pay him particular respect ; but in most cases the latter 
does not allow this, and only touches the hand that is ex- 
tended towards his : the other person then merely puts his 
own hand to his lips and forehead. To testify abject sub- 
mission, in craving pardon for an offense, in interceding 
for another person, or begging any favour of a superior, not 
unfrequently the feet are kissed instead of the hand. The 



78 EGYPT 

son kisses the hand of the father, the wife that of her 
husband ; and the slave, and often the free servant, that of 
the master. The slaves and servants of a grandee kiss their 
lord's sleeve, or the skirt of his clothing. 

When particular friends salute each other, they join 
their right hands, and then each kisses his own hand, or 
puts it to his lips and forehead, or merely places it on his 
breast, without kissing it : if after a long absence, and on 
some other occasions, they embrace each other ; each fall- 
ing on the other's neck, and kissing him on the right side 
of the face or neck, and then on the left. In polite society, 
various other formal salutations and compliments follow 
the selam. To most of these there are particular replies ; 
or two or more forms of reply may be used in some cases ; 
but to return any that custom has not prescribed would be 
considered as a proof of ignorance or vulgarity. 

When a person goes to the house of another to pay a 
visit, or for any other purpose, he never enters unawares, 
for this is expressly forbidden by the Koran, and particu- 
larly if he have to ascend to an upper apartment; in which 
case, he should call for permission, or announce his ap- 
proach. Should he find no person below, he claps his 
hands at the door, or in the court ; and waits for a servant 
to come down to him, or for permission to be given him 
to seat himself in a lower apartment, or ascend to an upper 
room. On entering the room in which the master of the 
house is seated, he gives the selam. The master returns 
the salutation ; and welcomes the visitor with courteousness 



COMMON USAGES OF SOCIETY 79 

and affability. To his superiors, and generally to his 
equals, he rises. Persons above him in rank he proceeds 
to meet in the court, or between the court and the room, 
or at the entrance of the room, or in the middle of the 
room, or a step from the place where he was sitting ; but 
often, to equals, he merely makes a slight motion, as if 
about to rise, and to most inferiors, he remains undisturbed. 
To his superiors, and often to his equals, he yields the 
most honourable place, which is a corner of the divan; it 
is that corner which is to the right of a person facing the 
upper end of the room. His equals sit at their ease, cross- 
legged, or with one knee raised ; and recline against the 
cushions ; his inferiors often sit upon their heels, or take 
their place upon the edge of the divan ; or, if very much 
beneath him in grade, seat themselves upon the mat or 
carpet. In strict etiquette, the visitor should not, at first, 
suffer his hands to appear, when entering the room, or 
when seated ; but should let the sleeves fall over them ; 
and when he has taken his place on the divan, he should 
not stretch out his legs, nor even allow his feet to be seen. 
Sometimes the visitor's own servant attends him with his 
pipe ; otherwise, a servant of the host brings a pipe for the 
visitor and one for his master; and, next, a cup of coffee is 
presented to each, for " tobacco without coffee," say the 
Arabs, " is like meat without salt." Servants often remain 
in the room during the whole period of a visit, stationed at 
the lower end, in a respectful attitude, with their hands 
joined (the left within the right) and held before the girdle. 



8o EGYPT 

The usual mode of summoning a servant is by clapping the 
hands ; the windows being of lattice-work, the sound is 
heard throughout the house. The subjects of conversation 
are generally the news of the day, the state of trade, the 
prices of provisions, and sometimes religion and science. 
Facetious stories are often related j and, very frequently, 
persons in the best society tell tales, and quote proverbs, 
of the most indecent nature. Visits not unfrequently 
occupy several hours. The pipes are replenished or re- 
placed by others as often as is necessary, and sometimes 
coffee is brought again, or sherbet. 

In the houses of the rich, it used to be a common cus- 
tom to sprinkle the guest before he rose to take his leave 
with rose-water or orange-flower-water, and to perfume him 
with the smoke of some odoriferous substance ; but of 
late years this practice has become unfrequent. As soon 
as the visitor has been perfumed, he takes his leave ; but 
he should not depart without previously asking permission 
to do so, and then giving the selam^ which is returned to 
him, and paying other set compliments, to which there are 
appropriate replies. If he is a person of much higher rank 
than the master of the house, the latter not only rises, but 
also accompanies him to the top of the stairs, or to the door 
of the room, and then commends him to the care of God. 

Friends very often send presents to each other merely 
for the sake of complying with common custom. The 
present is generally wrapped in an embroidered handker- 
chief, which is returned, with a trifling pecuniary gratifica- 



COMMON USAGES OF SOCIETY 8i 

tion, to the bearer. Fruit laid upon leaves, and sweetmeats 
and other dainties, placed in a dish or on a tray, and 
covered vi^ith a rich handkerchief or napkin, are common 
presents. To decline the acceptance of a present generally 
gives offense ; and is considered to reflect disgrace upon 
the person who has offered it. 

There are many formal usages in the ordinary intercourse 
of familiar acquaintance. When a man happens to sneeze, 
he says: "Praise be to God!" Each person present 
(servants excepted) then says to him : " God have mercy 
upon you ! " to which he generally replies : " God guide 
us and guide you ! " Should he yawn, he puts the back of 
his hand to his mouth and says : " I seek refuge with God 
from Satan the accursed ; " but he is not complimented on 
this act, as it is one that should rather be avoided, for it is be- 
lieved that the devil is in the habit of leaping into a gaping 
mouth. For a breach of good manners, it is more common 
to ask the pardon of God than that of the present company, 
by saying : " I beg pardon of God, the Great ! " When a 
man has just been shaved, or been to the bath, when he has 
just performed the ablution preparatory to prayer, when he 
has been saying his prayers, or doing any other meritorious 
act, when he has just risen from sleep, when he has pur- 
chased or put on any new article of dress, and on many 
other occasions, there are particular compliments to be paid 
to him, and particular replies for him to make. 

It is the rule with the Moslems to honour the right hand 
and foot above the left ; to use the right hand for all 



82 EGYPT 

honourable purposes ; to put on and take off the right 
shoe before the left ; and to put the right foot first over 
the threshold of a door. 

The Egyptians are extremely courteous to each other, 
and have a peculiar grace and dignity in their manner of 
salutation and their general demeanour, combined vi^ith 
easiness of address. Affability is a general characteristic of 
the Egyptians of all classes. It is common for strangers, 
even in a shop, after mutual salutation, to enter into con- 
versation vi^ith as much freedom as if they w^ere old ac- 
quaintances, and for one who has a pipe to offer it to 
another w^ho has none; and it is not unusual, nor is it 
generally considered unpolite, for persons in a first casual 
meeting to ask each other's names, professions, or trades, 
and places of abode. Lasting acquaintances are often 
formed on such occasions. In the middle and higher ranks 
of Egyptian society, it is very seldom that a man is heard 
to say anything offensive to the feelings of another in his 
company ; and the most profligate never venture to utter an 
expression meant to cast ridicule upon sincere religion : 
most persons, however, in every class are more or less 
licentious in their conversation, and extremely fond of 
joking. They are generally very lively and dramatic in 
their talk; but scarcely ever noisy in their mirth. They 
seldom indulge in loud laughter; expressing their enjoy- 
ment of anything ludicrous by a smile or an exclamation. 




THE REVELS OF ISLAM 

STAN LET LANE- POOLE 

MONG the pleasures which the wife does not 
necessarily share with her husband are those of 
the table. She may not eat with her lord unless he 
call her, and he often devours a solitary meal. The Egyp- 
tian is no gourmet, and his dinner parties are very simple 
affairs. After water has been poured over their hands, the 
guests seat themselves on the ground, or on the corners of 
the divan, so as to surround a little tinned tray which has 
already been placed upon a little inlaid table and furnished 
with large cakes of bread, spoons and glasses or cups, but 
no table-cloth, knives or forks. The cakes of bread serve 
as plates, our fingers as knives or forks, with frequent re- 
course to napkins. After saying " in the name of God " 
(bism-illah) the host begins the repast by plunging his spoon 
into the bowl of soup, and the guests follow his example : 
the spoons plying between the one bowl and the several 
mouths with beautiful impartiality. Then some made- 
dishes are brought in, and each man arms himself with a 
little piece of bread, and holding it to the edge of the dish 
draws a portion of meat upon it with the thumb and first 
two fingers of his right hand — the left is never used at 
meals except in cases of extreme necessity — and conveys it 



84 EGYPT 

to his mouth. The operation is really a clean and tidy one 
in polite society and with most dishes. It is not, however, 
very easy to carry a load of haricot beans, done in oil, to 
the mouth vi^ithout a slip ; and food that has to be conveyed 
gingerly also requires to be deposited well inside the lips : 
so that a fastidious European cannot help reflecting with 
horror on the number of fingers that go right into the 
mouths, and then are all dipped again in the same dish. A 
more unpleasant sight, however, to the uninitiated is the 
management of the whole lamb, which generally forms the 
piece de resistance of an Egyptian banquet. This is one of 
those cases of sheer necessity where the left hand may be 
brought into use, but some fine carvers can dispense with it 
even here. The operator thrusts his two thumbs deep in 
the flesh of the lamb, and then grabbing with his fingers 
tears out huge shapeless hunks, and hands them in his fists, 
shining with grease, to each of his guests. It is one of the 
most awful sights that the Western stomach has to assim- 
ilate in Oriental gastronomy. The cooking is generally 
admirable, the variety of dishes surprising, and as soon as 
one has grown accustomed to the principle of having 
mouths in common, there is no doubt that a diner a I'arabe 
is infinitely preferable to the pseudo-French dinners one 
gets at the hotels. Am.ong ordinary dishes are the follow- 
ing: Lamb or mutton cut into small pieces and stewed with 
various vegetables, and sometimes with peaches, apricots, 
or jujubes and sugar; cucumbers, or small gourds, or the 
fruit of the black or white egg-plant, stuffed with rice and 




THE TURKISH BAZAAR, KHAN KHALIL, CAIRO 



THE REVELS OF ISLAM 85 

minced meat, vine-leaves or pieces of lettuce leaf or cab- 
bage leaf, enclosing a similar composition ; small morsels 
of lamb or mutton, roasted on skewers and called kebab; 
fowls simply roasted or boiled, or boned and stuffed with 
raisins, pistachio nuts, crumbled bread and parsley; and 
various kinds of pastry. The repast is frequently opened 
with soup, and is generally ended with boiled rice, mixed 
with a little butter and seasoned with salt and pepper ; and 
after this is served a water-melon or other fruit, or a bowl 
of a sweet drink composed of water and raisins, and some- 
times other kinds of fruit, boiled in it, and then sugar with 
a little rose-water added to it when cool. Many of these 
dishes and preparations are delicious, and it is a marvel that 
Europeans living in the East do not more commonly adopt 
them. 

An Arab dinner is a very sedate affair: only water is 
drunk with it ; and it is not often that music or laughter 
enlivens the banquet, though a hired singer is sometimes 
introduced on great occasions. Mohammed the prophet 
was not musical, and regarded musical instruments as en- 
gines of the Devil. Good Moslems therefore should have 
no ear. Whether it be in consequence of increased piety 
or increased stupidity, the modern Egyptian certainly has 
forgotten how to enjoy himself in the unholy manner of his 
ancestors ; or rather he has sobered a good deal in his way 
of enjoyment, and takes it less often and in strict modera- 
tion. For the singers and performers are still to be heard 
in Egypt. I have listened to the sweetest piping in the 



86 EGYPT 

world in a dervish mosque in Cairo, and some wonderful 
fiddling on the kemenga at Thebes. There is the class of 
'Almas, or singing women, who follow their art with con- 
siderable success, and whose singing has a strange charm to 
those who can accustom their ears to the peculiar intervals 
of the Arab scale and the weird modulations of the dirge- 
like melodies. Sometimes one of these 'Almas — whose re- 
spectable profession must not be confused with the volup- 
tuous trade of the dancing-girls — is hired to sing at a din- 
ner party ; but, as a rule, all musical and other entertain- 
ments are reserved for those special occasions when the 
Egyptian makes it a matter of conscience to revel — such as 
marriage feasts and the periodical festivals of the Moslem 
Calendar. It is then that the parties of 'Almas are en- 
gaged to sing ; groups of wanton Ghawazy dancers are in- 
troduced into the presence of decent women, to entertain 
them with their ungraceful and suggestive writhings; and 
clowns and buffoons are employed to divert the guests with 
their grotesque and generally obscene fooling, just as they 
diverted the ancestors of these very people in the days of 
the Pharaohs. The Egyptian, however poor he is, will 
rather pay cent per cent interest all his life, than not borrow 
enough money to celebrate his own or his family's wed- 
dings with pomp and revelry. 

There seems to be always a festival going on in Cairo, 
and you have hardly recovered from the effects of one 
Molid when another comes to distract you even more. 
And the Moslem Molids are not one-day festivals like the 



THE REVELS OF ISLAM 87 

feasts of the Christian Church — they last three, four and 
even nine days at a stretch. There is hardly a week in 
the year that has not some excitement, some saint to be 
honoured, some memory to be cherished. In the opening 
month of the year, the sacred Moharram, the first ten days 
are specially holy, for in them the pious alms prescribed in 
the Koran ought to be paid. The paying of alms is not, 
indeed, in itself an excitement; but the duty, whether ful- 
filled or not, is the signal for all sorts of curious customs 
and superstitions. 

The tenth day of Moharram is the most sacred of ^11, 
for on this day occurred the martyrdom of our Lord Hoseyn 
on the field of Kerbela, Persia and India are the lands 
where this day is most highly honoured, and the Passion 
Play of Hasan and Hoseyn is performed before deeply sym- 
pathetic audiences. But in Cairo, too, the people rever- 
ence the memory of the martyr ; eat Ashura or " Tenth 
Day " cakes in his honour, and crowd to the mosque of the 
Hasaneyn, where the head of the saint is buried, to do 
homage at the shrine and wonder at the performances of 
the dervishes, who are shouting and whirling, eating glass 
and fire, and wagging their heads for hours to the name of 
Allah. 

In the second month, the Egyptian caravan of pilgrims 
returns from Mekka, and people go out a couple of days' 
journey, or at least as far as the Birket EI-Hagg, to meet 
their returning friends. The ceremony of welcoming the 
pilgrims becomes a holiday, and almost degenerates into a 



88 EGYPT 

picnic, though the wails and shrieks of those who learn 
that their pilgrim kinsfolk have succumbed to the vigours of 
the road take off the keen edge of enjoyment. Those, 
however, who return rejoice the hearts of their friends by 
the relics they bring with them — sealed blue bottles, filled 
with water from the blessed well of Zemzem, the very 
well which sprang up in the desert for Hagar and Ishmael 
in their hour of need j dust from the Prophet's tomb at 
Medina, shreds from the old covering of the Kaaba, and 
other venerable trophies. In return, these friends have 
prepared the pilgrim's house for him, painted it with red 
and white stripes, and adorned it with vivid green pictures 
of trees, and camels, and other startling objects ; or, per- 
haps, have hung a stuffed baby-hippopotamus over the 
door, to show that he who dwells within is a travelled 
thane. 

Rabi' el-Awwal, the third month of the Moslem year, has 
also its special event, for it is then that the festival of the 
Prophet's birth, the great Molid en-Nehy^ is held. The 
amusements still go on very much as they used to fifty 
years ago, and the Moly en-Neby is a famous carnival time 
for the people of Cairo. 

No sooner is it over than other festivals begin. To say 
nothing of minor commemorations, like the Molid at 
Bulak, the great feast of the Hasaneyn treads quickly on 
the heels of the Prophet's Birthday, and rivals if not sur- 
passes it in the magnificence of the street displays and the 
hilarity of the population. Hoseyn is deeply revered in 



THE REVELS OF ISLAM 89 

Cairo, and his Molid is one of the sights of the capital that 
most delight the European visitor. Nothing more pic- 
turesque and fairylike can be imagined than the scenes in the 
streets and bazaars of Cairo on the great night of the 
Hasaneyn. 

The scene, as I turned into one of the narrow lanes of 
the great Turkish bazaar which fronts the mosque of the 
Hasaneyn, was Uke a picture in the Arabian Nights. The 
long bazaar was lighted by innumerable chandeliers and 
coloured lamps and candles, and covered by awnings of 
rich shawls and stuffs from the shops beneath ; while, be- 
tween the strips of awning, one could see the sombre out- 
lines of the unlighted houses above, in striking contrast to 
the brilliancy and gaiety below. The shops had quite 
changed their character. All the wares which were usually 
littered about had disappeared ; the trays of miscellaneous 
daggers and rings and spoons and what-not were gone ; and 
each little shop was turned into a tastefully furnished re- 
ception room. The sides and top were hung with silks 
and cashmeres, velvets, brocades and embroideries of the 
greatest beauty and rarity — costly stuffs, which the most 
inquisitive purchaser never managed to see on ordinary oc- 
casions. The whole of the sides of the bazaar formed one 
long blaze of gold and light and colour. And within each 
shop the owner sat surrounded by a semicircle of friends, 
all dressed in their best, very clean and superbly courteous 
- — for the Cairo tradesman is always a gentleman in aspect, 
even when he is cheating you most outrageously. The 



90 EGYPT 

very man with whom you haggled hotly in the morning 
will now invite you politely to sit down with him and 
smoke ; at his side is a little ivory or mother-of-pearl table, 
from which he takes a bottle of some sweet drink flavoured 
with almonds or roses, and offers it to you with finished 
grace. Seated in the richly-hung recess, you see the throng 
pushing by j the whole population, it seems, of Cairo, in 
their best array and merriest temper. All at once the 
sound of drums and pipes is heard, and a band of dervishes, 
chanting benedictions on the Prophet and Hoseyn, pass 
through the delighted crowd. On your left is a shop — nay, 
a throne-room in miniature — where a story-teller is holding 
an audience spellbound as he relates, with dramatic ges- 
tures, some favourite tale. Hard by, a holy man is revolv- 
ing his head solemnly and unceasingly, as he repeats the 
name of God, or some potent text from the Koran. In 
another place, a party of dervishes are performing a z/^r, 
or a complete recital of the Koran is being chanted by 
swaying devotees. The whole scene is certainly unreal 
and fairylike. We can imagine ourselves in the land of 
the Ginn, or in the City of Brass, but not in Cairo or in 
the Nineteenth Century. 

Outside the Khan, dense masses of people are crowding 
into the mosque of the Hasaneyn, where specially horrible 
performances take place, and where the tour of the shrine 
of Hoseyn must be made. Near by, a string of men are 
entering a booth ; we follow, and find tumblers at work, 
and a performing pony, and a clown who always imitates 



THE REVELS OF ISLAM 91 

the feats of the gymnasts, always fails grotesquely, and 
invariably provokes roars of laughter. In another booth 
Kara-Guz is carrying on his intrigues : this Egyptian 
Punch is better manipulated than our own, whom he nearly 
resembles j but he is not so choice in his language or be- 
haviour, and we are glad before long to leave a place where 
the jokes are rather broad, and certain saltatory insects un- 
usually active. People of the lower class, however, care 
nothing for these drawbacks ; they laugh till their sides 
ache at Kara-Guz's sallies, and whatever they see, wherever 
they go, whomever they meet, whatsoever their cares or 
their poverty, on this blessed night of the Hasaneyn they 
are perfectly happy. 

The Hasaneyn festival is followed by the Molids of 
many other holy personages — whether they are female 
saints, like our Lady Zeynab, or learned divines, like the 
famous Iman Esh-Shafiy — into a boat on the leaden dome 
of whose beautiful thirteenth century mosque a quantity of 
grain used to be poured every month of Shaban. Then 
there is the feast of the Miraculous Ascent — to wit, the 
visit to Paradise, which Mohammed dreamed he took upon 
the back of the fabulous beast Borak, and which his dis- 
ciples manufactured into a real bodily ascent into Heaven. 
There is the great fast of Ramadan, and after the fast comes 
the feast, the Id Es-Saghir, when every one rejoices that the 
penance is over and done. Every one puts on his very best 
clothes — quite new, if he can — and prepares to enjoy him- 
self after his privations. Friends kiss each other in the 



92 EGYPT 

street ; all the world pours out thankful prayers at the 
mosque ; servants receive bakhshish from masters, past and 
present ; pancakes and salt fish are devoured in every 
house ; whole families pay visits to the tombs of their re- 
lations, break green palm branches over them, and spread 
sweet basil around ; while swings and whirligigs at the 
approaches to the cemetery show that even grave-visiting 
may be made an exhilarating diversion. 

Presently the time arrives for the procession of the Kiswa 
— the Holy Carpet, which is carried in solemn pomp, and 
in the presence of all the court and army, from the citadel 
to the Hasaneyn, where its sewing is finished, and it is 
made ready to be taken with the pilgrims and hung over 
the sacred Kaaba. And soon after, a second procession 
follows — the passage of the Mahmal, which, like the Ark 
of the Covenant, is carried before the pilgrim caravan to 
Mekka and back again. It is a sort of howdah — a square 
frame of wood, with a pyramidal top, covered with brocade 
and inscriptions worked in gold, with the Tughra, or 
Sultan's cipher, at the top, and a view of the Kaaba on the 
front. It contains nothing ; but two copies of the Koran 
are attached to it outside. Its origin is traced to the 
beautiful Queen Shejer-ed-durr (" Tree of Pearls " was her 
romantic name, being interpreted), wife of the founder of 
the dynasty of Turkish Mamluks, who performed the pil- 
grimage to Mekka in a litter of this shape in the year 1272. 
Ever afterwards a litter was sent with the Egyptian caravan 
of pilgrims as an emblem of royalty. But there is no doubt 



THE REVELS OF ISLAM 93 

that the Mahmal has an older origin than this : it is, per- 
haps, a survival of the Sacred Barques of the old Egyptian 
temples, or represents the curious standards of some of the 
Arab tribes. 

Space fails us to speak of the Id El-Kebir, in the last 
month of the year ; or of the ceremony of " Smelling the 
Breeze," when the period of hot winds, called Khamasin, 
comes on ; or of the " Night of the Drop," when a mirac- 
ulous drop falls into the Nile and makes it begin to rise, 
and when people put lumps of dough on their housetops, 
and anxiously inspect them in the morning — for a cracked 
lump of dough means death in the course of the year. 
These and many other festivals furnish occasion for merry- 
making and enjoyment ; and it is the Cairene's own fault 
if he does not amuse himself. 

The amusements of the Egyptians, however, whether re- 
ligious or secular, are quiet amusements. He enjoys look- 
ing at dancers, but he does not dance himself; he listens to 
music, but to sing or play himself would require too much 
exertion ; he watches the gymnast, but tries no feats of 
strength in his own person ; he wanders through illuminated 
streets and listens to zikrs and romances, but he proceeds 
in as leisurely a manner as possible. If he plays games, 
they are sedentary games — chess, draughts, backgammon, 
cards, mankala. There was a time when he hunted and 
hawked, but now he does not understand sport or the chase. 
Throwing the jerid is out of fashion ; and, in short, any- 
thing aesthetic or virile is foreign to the indolent sedate 



94 EGYPT 

character of the Egyptian. The Cairene does not cultivate 
physical exercise — he detests it. If he is to enjoy himself 
it must be in a tranquil manner. In a hot climate, one is 
not over-anxious to move. 



ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO 

A. B. DE GUERFILLE 

AFTER five days of wind, rolling and pitching seas, 
came absolute calm. We had just entered the 
outer port of Alexandria, the famous town founded 
by Alexander the Great, the town which, in the time of 
Cleopatra, reigned queen of the Mediterranean. 

The calm was of short duration. A noise, atrocious, 
infernal, indescribable, rose on every side. The Schleswig 
had hardly cast her anchor before she was surrounded by 
hundreds of small boats crammed with Egyptians, Turks 
and Arabs, who howled and gesticulated frantically. In a 
few seconds the boat was invaded by this extraordinary 
crowd, dragomans, interpreters, porters from different 
hotels, boatmen, touts from different agencies, etc., etc. 
It was pandemonium, a Tower of Babel gone mad ; whilst 
the poor tourist, at his wit's end, saw fifty devils, black or 
brown, throw themselves on to his luggage. But at this 
moment a stentorian voice was heard : " All right, gentle- 
men, all right ! Here are Cook's men, they will look after 
everything." And on the deck, a huge Arab, in a superb 
costume, suddenly appeared, surrounded by a crowd of 
sturdy porters. Tight red jerseys covered the chests of 
these men, on which in white letters was sewn " Thos. 



96 EGYPT 

Cook and Sons." As if by magic quiet was restored : like 
a general on the field of battle, Cook's agent took command, 
answering politely the numerous questions put to him by 
the travellers ; and to those anxious about the formalities to 
be gone through at the Custom House, he explained that, 
severe as these were, they need not trouble : " There is no 
Custom examination for you," he said, smiling quietly j 
" we have obtained special permission to pass the luggage 
of all our passengers without being opened. You have 
only to give us your luggage tickets and let us know where 
you wish it sent, either to your hotel or to the station, and 
you will find it there awaiting you." 

Nothing could have explained better the justice and ap- 
propriateness of the title given to the directors of Messrs. 
Cook, " the uncrowned kings of Egypt and the East ! " 
Was not the Emperor William himself, when he wished to 
visit the Holy Land, obliged to confide himself and all his 
belongings to Messrs. Cook, like the most ordinary of tour- 
ists ? The white boats of the agency lay alongside the 
Schleswig^ and we soon found ourselves installed in one of 
them with all our baggage. 

A few minutes later, a victoria with a couple of excel- 
lent little horses took us swiftly along the streets of 
Alexandria. 

First of all came the Arab quarter : its streets muddy 
and filthy, its shops open to all the wmds of heaven, its 
houses dark and mysterious, its swarming crowd, the negro, 
the brown-skinned, and the white ; its beggars, its cripples, 



ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO 97 

its children almost naked, crying, running, shouting ; its 
veiled women ; and above all, its smells, acrid and inde- 
scribable, the odour of the East, vi^hich at first sickens and 
disgusts. 

But our little horses going hard, all that was soon passed, 
and the quarter inhabited by the Europeans and the rich 
Egyptians came into view, with its large and beautiful 
streets, its huge houses, superb palaces, its gay cafes, and 
its shops, worthy of the Parisian Boulevards. 

More than anything else, this is the land of contrasts. 
Here a palace where reigns unbridled luxury, there a hovel 
swarming with beings scarcely human. 

We slacken our pace as we enter the famous *' Place 
Mohamed Ali," in the middle of which rises the equestrian 
statue of the founder of the reigning dynasty, a fine piece 
of work by Jaquemart. This is the centre of the European 
life, the Hyde Park Corner of Alexandria, where at certain 
hours of the day all the rank and fashion of the town may 
be seen. 

Here and there, in passing, I get a shake of the hand 
from some old friend, business man, banker or broker. As 
for speculators, every one, more or less, is that. 

For several years the mania for speculation seems to have 
attacked the whole population, and the Stock Exchange at 
Alexandria is, as it were, the heart of the body politic, full 
of life, of hopes and fears, where every one large and small, 
rich or poor, strong or weak, meets on common ground. 
Cotton, its rise or fall, that is the predominant thought in 



98 EGYPT 

the minds of all those men amongst whom are so many 
familiar faces. 

Indeed, after nine months' scraping and hoarding, these 
good Alexandrians troop across to Paris and the best known 
watering-places on the Continent, to disgorge in the re- 
maining three their accumulated gains. 

All have the look of men well pleased with the world, 
and all explain themselves thus : *' My dear fellow, busi- 
ness is A I. Egypt has entered on an era of prosperity 
hardly credible. We are making money hand over fist, 
every one is in the swim. You will see for yourself, from 
one end of Egypt to the other you will hear the same story. 
The Government has been able to reduce taxation and in- 
crease the salaries of its employees, big and little. The 
golden age has arrived ! " 

Can this be possible ? Can it be that, whilst in Europe 
and America every one cries poverty, there is only pros- 
perity here, in this land of Egypt, which scarcely twenty 
years ago was in a state of bankruptcy ? 

And, strange as it may seem, not one of these men will 
speak to you of Egypt, of its history, of its artistic treas- 
ures, not one of them will advise you to visit a museum, a 
monument, or a park. 

The Stock Exchange and Cotton, these are the be-all 
and end-all of existence. If by chance they do advise you 
to go to the theatre, it will not be because there is some- 
thing particularly good to be seen, but simply because " X 
receives ;^4,ooo for three performances, and that the stones 



ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO 99 

and jewels in the hair or round the necks of the elegantes 
represent a sum of ;^io,ooo,ooo sterling ! " 

When he talks cotton or diamonds, your Alexandrian 
is a bit of a braggart. In a word, his head is a money- 
box, and his heart a purse, and they ^are both crammed 
to repletion with bank notes. All the same he is a good 
fellow, pleasant, hospitable, and generous. If he has 
the faults of the confirmed gambler he has also his good 
qualities. 

As to his better-half, it is difficult to judge. Admira- 
tion has perhaps blinded me, for the " Alexandrine " is so 
pretty, so elegant, and so chic, that criticism is quite dis- 
armed. One would have to travel far to find a town where 
there are so many young women whose good looks and 
perfect elegance continually charm the eye. It may be 
said, of course, that they are somewhat shallow, that their 
dresses, their jewels, and especially their flirtations are of 
more interest to them than the graver questions of life ; 
but what does that matter when they are so charming, and 
so deliciously feminine ? 

Certainly we are far from the time when in Alexandria 
there was a famine of femininity either ^'■d'un monde ou de 
Vautrer 

In a town in which the upper classes are composed of so 
many different nationalities, Egyptians, Greeks, Levantines, 
Italians, French, English and Germans, there are as a mat- 
ter of course many cliques, more or less jealous of one 
another \ but there is one common ground where all unite 



loo EGYPT 

and all help — Charity, which, here as elsewhere, seems to 
bring out all that is best in our common humanity. 

The Greek colony, rich, numerous and powerful, is at 
the head of all those good works whose end is the alleviation 
of human suffering ; and amongst those whose efforts in 
well-doing are continuous I would mention the Salvagos, 
the Zervudachis, the Em. Benackis and the Sinadinos. 

The first-named family has just given to the town the 
sum of ;^20,ooo, in order to found a School of Art, a step 
in the right direction, and one which, I trust, will help con- 
siderably to raise Alexandria from its present state of rather 
sordid money-making. 

Immense as the progress of the town has been in the last 
quarter of a century, and brilliant as its present position is, 
I have not a doubt that, in the near future, it will be called 
upon to occupy a position much more important. 

If Alexandria cannot assert the possession of the remains 
of her founder (Alexander the Great) she can at least boast 
of having a statue of the greatest man that modern Egypt 
has seen. I refer to Mehemet Ali, the founder of the 
Khedivial dynasty, and a hero of whom his descendants 
and Egypt have every reason to be proud. 

Superb on his horse of bronze, Mehemet Ali dominates 
the grand Square, where all the busy life of the town con- 
centrates. Some few steps further on another statue, this 
time a living one, caught my eye. On a beautiful well- 
groomed half-bred, an Egyptian cavalryman, erect and un- 
moving, stiff in his sombre uniform, mounted guard. A 



ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO loi 

finer soldier one could not wish to see. His bronzed skin, 
black moustache, dark eyes, slender body, straight and 
supple, made up the ideal of a cavalry soldier. It was with 
men such as these that the great Pasha made of Egypt a 
Power. 

My thoughts are quickly disturbed. Across the Square, 
with the dull tread of marching feet, comes a company of 
English soldiers. They are boys, beardless boys, almost 
delicate looking, clad in unbecoming khaki, and their child- 
ish faces almost swallowed up in immense helmets. Can 
it be that these youths are the conquerors of this dark and 
warlike figure seated unmoved on his lovely steed ? 

Whilst the khaki-clad company file smartly past him, I 
take a keen look to see if any trace of feeling is shown on 
his dusky face. In vain, not a muscle moves ; and if the 
sight of these foreign soldiers, trampling with their heavy 
boots the soil of his country, awakens in him any sense of 
bitterness, it is carefully hidden in a heart where for long 
the spark of patriotism has been if not extinct at least 
deeply hidden. 

At midday the assault on the express for Cairo takes 
place. The train is thoroughly up to date : corridor car- 
riages of the most comfortable type, and a restaurant car of 
the International Sleeping Car Company. One might im- 
agine oneself in Europe if it were not for the numerous pas- 
sengers wearing the fez, the Arab passing us the hors (Toeuvres^ 
and above all the extraordinary racket made by the servants. 
Through the small opening by which the dishes are passed, 



I02 EGYPT 

the cooks and waiters apostrophize one another, dispute and 
discuss in an outlandish gibberish. This noise seems all 
the stranger as the Arab as a rule goes about his work 
almost as silently as a Chinese or Japanese. Their chief 
failing, however, is the insatiable curiosity which the pres- 
ence of a white woman in the house arouses. To enjoy 
a glimpse of beauty unadorned in the form of a fair Euro- 
pean, be she young and beautiful, or old and ugly, they 
have recourse to every ruse and every stratagem. The key- 
hole is the point of observation most in vogue, but when 
that has been carefully plugged by the wily person au courant 
with their little ways, a hole drilled with a large gimlet in a 
quiet corner does equally well. The door of the bath-room 
is naturally most frequently threatened. 

Moderate in speed, the train crosses the vast highly culti- 
vated plains where the maize crop predominates. One 
might almost imagine oneself on the Western plains of 
America, if from time to time high palm-trees, like huge 
feathers, did not raise their tufted heads. Then there are 
the little villages of yellow mud-built huts, of which the 
flat roofs, covered over with thatch, serve as stable and 
poultry-yard ; goats, sheep, chickens, dogs and pigs, all 
seem to prefer this exalted position, from which indeed the 
view is much finer than from below. Over the wretched 
roads come the camels, loaded in fearsome fashion, with 
step slow and measured, the head high and small, and the 
neck so long, so very long ! The gravity of their move- 
ments is in striking contrast to the paces of the asses, of 



ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO 103 

which hundreds are to be seen. Ah ! these Egyptian don- 
keys ! How elegant they are, how smart, how full of life 
and grace, and how different from their European brothers ! 
They have a chic indescribable, and to see them is to love 
them. 

" What horrible cows ! " cried a young American girl, 
pointing from the window of the carriage to some huge 
animals with black and glossy skins, whose looks were, in 
fact, rather repulsive. 

" These are not exactly cows," explained an Egyptian. 
" That is the ghamousah^ the female buffalo, whose milk is 
quite excellent. There is in our country a tradition that, 
after God had made the cow, the devil, coming to have a 
look, burst out laughing, and declared that he could do 
better himself with his eyes shut. God took him at his 
word. The devil set to work and produced — the gha- 
mousah ! " 

Three o'clock ! The hundred and ten miles separating 
us from Cairo have been left behind, and now the capital 
of Egypt rises up before us, a mass of white under a sky 
radiantly blue, sparkling with gold under the rays of a sun 
which, on this the first day of December, recalls the lovely 
days of May in France. 



THE NILE FENS 

D. G. HOGARTH 

F"~% ^HE fenland of the Nile is not visited by the thou- 
B sands who seek their pleasure winter by winter 

"^ in Egypt. As they enter from Alexandria, a 
corner of it slips by as the train gathers speed for the run 
to Damanhur, and all the later wonders of the valley sel- 
dom efface that first impression of the Delta — the long 
vista of level mere under the sunset, and copper-green 
fields and ant-hill villages outlined against an amber sky. 
The contrary corner can be seen from a hurricane-deck 
between Port Said and Ismailia, where the silent stretches 
of marsh open on the right hand, relieved by flocks of 
long-legged birds which wade far out, or trail like wisps of 
smoke across the sun. But that is all the tourist sees. He 
never leaves the beaten tracks to explore the Fens, and no 
one since Heliodorus has described anything but the fringe 
of them. 

They form a land apart from the rest of Egypt, very 
difficult to penetrate or to traverse even by boat, and inun- 
dated by stagnant waters of the great river, which are 
dammed by a broad belt of dunes, and contaminated with 
drainage of salt soils and the insetting sea. On the sea- 
board itself lies an almost continuous chain of vast lagoons, 




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THE NILE FENS 105 

and for a long day's journey south of these the land will 
still be found deep marsh, rotten with the overflowing of 
disused canals and lost arms of the Nile, almost trackless, 
and only now beginning to undergo here and there the first 
process of reclamation. 

In their present state, as might be expected, the fens 
have very few inhabitants ; and perhaps none of the sparse 
settlements, now found within their southern fringe, is 
much older than the Nineteenth ' Century. For almost 
without exception these have grown up round isolated 
farmsteads, and still bear the names of local owners of land 
who were living far to southward not above a generation or 
two ago. When the Egyptian population under the rule 
of the last Mameluke Beys was not the half of its present 
figure, there was little temptation to attempt the conquest 
of saline and water-logged soils; and local tradition remem- 
bers a not distant epoch — not more distant than Muham- 
mad All's day— when all the district was a secure, if un- 
comfortable, refuge for the broken men who would avoid 
the tax-gatherer and the conscription-ofHcer, or had de- 
serted from the battalions that the inexorable Pasha was for- 
ever sending to the conquest of Arabia, the Sudan, or Syria. 

The repute of the northern marshes remained what it 
had been in the Fifth Century after Christ, when Helio- 
dorus described, in the opening scene of his "vEthiopic 
Romance," an amphibious, outlawed society living there 
by fishing and raiding ; and some trace of this state of 
things is still to be discerned in the timid and farouche 



io6 EGYPT 

manner which characterizes even now the inhabitants of 
the few older hamlets. Here alone in modern Egypt 
fellahin women habitually bar the outer door at sight of a 
stranger, and children run to hide among the reeds or 
brushwood, and even grown men, met in the way, hold 
aloof like Bedawis till informed of your character and pur- 
pose. 

To visit the marsh-land, you may leave the Berari rail- 
way which traverses mid-Delta from Dessuk on the one 
Nile to Sherbin on the other, at any point, but preferably 
at Kafres-Sheikh or Belkas, for thence roads have been made 
northward towards the limit of habitation. That is soon 
reached so far as the great flats are concerned, lying be- 
tween the three or four main waterways, which are old 
Nile arms. But along the farther course of these a few 
tiny clusters of huts may be seen to northward. Lower 
Delta hamlets are built up of mud into such fantastic pep- 
per-pot forms as will throw ofF the frequent rains of the 
Delta, and, seen afar, suggest nothing so much as structures 
of gigantic building insects. 

Thereafter nothing lies ahead but the great saline flats, 
upon which vision is limited only by the curvature of the 
earth. Their monotonous surface is varied by great tracts 
of inundation, which dry slowly as the spring advances, 
leaving broad plains reticulated like a crocodile's hide, and 
always most treacherous where seeming most dry ; for un- 
der their thin superficial cake of mud, white with efflores- 
cent salts, lie depths of black saturated sand. Elsewhere 



THE NILE FENS 107 

the level is broken by soapy sand hummocks, heaped round 
and over shrubs or clumps of reeds ; and among these pool 
succeeds to slough and slough to pool, and the going for 
many miles is, at best, worse than that on loose chalk land 
at the breaking of a long frost. 

There is a sensation of death in all this spongy land, 
which exudes water and salt round your heel ; and nothing 
serves to dispell it — not the many birds, shocking in their 
tameness as the beasts seen by Alexander Selkirk ; not the 
myriad insects which assail the traveller who is luckless 
enough to ride down wind ; not the teeming life of the 
ditches ; not the half-wild buffaloes, strayed from southern 
farmsteads, which you may startle from their wallows and 
send soughing knee-deep through the slime ; not even that 
vivifying force of Egypt, the ruffling north wind, tirelessly 
bowing the strident reeds. 

The vast soapy bogs, and even wider expanses of per- 
manent inundation, are fed by the waste of drains and 
canals which spring far up the Delta and expire at last un- 
regarded under the face of the dunes ; and by a network of 
forgotten waterways of Ptolemaic and Roman date, wan- 
dering now unguided through the marsh. To meet with 
one of these in a day's journey is to lose many an hour in 
seeking a ford through the deep silt from one crumbling 
bank to another, and to endure no mean discomfort stripped 
under a noonday sun for the benefit of mosquitoes. Only 
too rarely will you obtain passage in the log-boat of a 
marshman, descended from some outlawed refugee, who 



io8 EGYPT 

spends his days in fishing and his nights prone under a bee- 
hive of reeds and mud, which might have sheltered a lake- 
dweller of the Neolithic age. Heliodorus mentions boats 
*' rudely hewed out of the rough tree " which crept about 
the channels, and on his excursions from Alexandria about 
the year 400, he probably saw scenes little different from 
those which offer themselves in the fenland in the present 
year of grace. 

That I was able in the long run to visit every spot to 
which I had a mind, in a country where the obvious road is 
usually the least possible, I owed mainly to the guides, 
horses, mules — even steam launches — put at my disposal by 
the Societe Anonyme du Behera. The advent of this great 
corporation is the modern event of most importance in 
these wilds. With a seat in Alexandria, a board composed 
of most of the nationalities represented in that polyglot city, 
a British managing director, formerly in high place in the 
Egyptian Department of Public Works, and a staff of 
young Britons, Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks, Copts, Ar- 
menians, Jews, and what not, this company is achieving the 
reconquest of the marsh-land, and every year the smoke of 
its traction engines rises nearer the lagoons. 

The Society began where the local magnates of Kafres- 
Sheikh and Belkas, once called " Little Kings of Berari," 
had been forced to leave off, in despair of the sourness and 
saturation of the soils. The larger canals and drains had 
been cut and embanked through the ooze by government 
labour; but the Society had to construct the lesser, and, 



THE NILE FENS 109 

that done, to attack certain of the nearer and higher-lying 
lands with great harrows, which tear and distribute the 
soapy hummocks, and with steam-ploughs, which open the 
surface to the drying wind and sun. Washed with sweet 
Nile water, the slime was found capable of bearing rice and 
barley for one year or two, and, purged by such crops, 
would send up here and there clover in the third season, 
and even a remunerative yield of cotton. Presently the 
local husbandmen living in villages to southward were in- 
duced to take leases, and ere long to buy, while the steam 
engines moved on into the marsh. 

In ten years the company has built three great model 
farms and many smaller ones; leveled and restored to cul- 
tivation thousands and thousands of acres; abolished a third 
of all the marsh in Berari, and caused population to return 
to a region where, a generation ago, the lone Coptic Con- 
vent of the Apparition of Our Lady to St. Guemiana was 
the last outpost of man. Moreover, native landowners 
have now learned something of the Society's methods, and 
far out in the swamps many a farm-oasis has been called 
into being where till lately all was salt and ooze and sand. 

So much for the true marsh-land. North of it lies the 
lagoon district, fenced from the sea by a broad belt of 
dunes. It shows in most respects a sharp contrast to the 
fens, being a region comparatively rich and populous and 
of very old settlement ; but it is neither less remote, nor 
better known to the casual tourist In Egypt. Nor is it one 
whit less interesting, for nowhere in the Nile land is to be 



no EGYPT 

seen a region more primitive, or a more recent contact of 
aboriginal Eastern folk and Western incomers. 

To reach the lakes you must descend one of the greater 
canals of the Central Delta before the summer dryness in a 
boat of the lightest draught, and, leaving the last of the 
locks far behind, pass beyond all habitations of Nile hus- 
bandmen into an amphibious Limbo, in doubt between land 
and water, where no life of man abides continually. Soon 
the canal dykes cease on either hand, and the banks fall to 
a few inches in height. Let your boat slip on a mile or 
two more. The flood brims bank high, its wavelets slop 
on to the land, and lo ! you find there is no longer land 
either to right or left, behind or before. Undefined by any 
line of coast, Egypt has slid at the last under her own wa- 
ters and become invisible at less than a mile away, and the 
voyager finds himself adrift on a sea, seeming limitless, so 
low are its shores, and bottomless, so turbid are its harassed 
waves. Yet, in fact, if a tall man let himself down into 
any part of the great area of this lake the surface will 
scarcely rise to his armpit. 

You will not sail a mile on the lake unamazed at its 
scaly wealth. Silvery bodies leap by tens and twenties from 
the ochrous surface, and the water boils with the passing 
of shoals. Boats at anchor, boats adrift with trailing nets, 
boats under full sail, multiply as one goes north and east, 
till all the loneliness of the Limbo is forgotten. All round 
the horizon spring groves of perpendicular poles crossed by 
poles oblique, the masts and lateen yards of invisible hulls. 



THE NILE FENS m 

moored by invisible islets whose sandy levels are all but 
awash, I know not how many craft ply on Lake Burul- 
los, but the tale must run into hundreds and that of the 
fisherfolk to thousands — the latter of a blond type dignified 
with some of that energy and reserve which are seldom al- 
together wanting to men whose business is on the great 
waters. 

The new land does not begin to rise on the northeastern 
horizon till a dozen barren islets have slipped astern. 
First emerge the higher dunes, uplifted in a shimmering 
mirage, rose and yellow like low cumulus clouds touched 
by sunset. These run one into another till they become a 
continuous range, spotted with black tufts, which are the 
plumes of half-buried palms. A cluster of huts to left with 
certain upstanding blocks is the village of Borg, with its 
dismantled fort and coastguard station, situated on all 
that remains of the Sebennytic estuary of the Nile. A rank 
odour of curing comes down the wind, for there are dried the 
putrescent fish on which half the poor of Lower Egypt live. 
To right and ahead, as you wear round the last island and 
set a course due east, a large dark stain resolves itself into 
a little town with a minaret or two set on a hillock and 
backed by the golden dunes and the palms. A forest of 
naked masts and yards lies out on the lake ; it is the fleet 
of Baltim, the chief settlement of the Burullos fisherfolk, 
and old episcopal see of Parallos, whose sound, corrupted 
on Arab lips, makes the modern name. 

So flat is the lake floor that a great way from the margin 



112 EGYPT 

the water is still but inches deep, and the grounded feluccas 
discharge their freight on to the backs of camels, which are 
trained against Nature both to receive their loads standing 
and to plash unconcerned a mile out in the inland sea. So 
far out also as to be dimly seen, naked children roam all 
day and every day, plying in either hand tiny javelins or 
little casting-nets, fishing as their first forefathers fished ; 
and I have seen no healthier or happier babies than this 
amphibious brood, whose playground is the lagoon. The 
fathers and mothers also seem to pass their days al fresco 
on the great expanse of sandy beach, coopering boats, buy- 
ing and selling fish, chattering, sleeping in the sun. 

It is astonishing in Egypt to see any life so clean. Here 
is no longer the Nile mud, a viscous ink when wet and a 
fouling dust if dry, but the purest ruin of calcareous rocks. 
Even the huts are not clay-built, but of ancient Roman 
bricks dug out of the mounds that lie to south of the 
lagoon, and long ago mellowed to a dusky red which har- 
monizes to admiration with the yellow dunes and the 
palms. Less solid beehive shelters, byres and fences are 
plaited of dry palm-fronds. 

It is a most singular bit of Egypt, this long sand-belt, 
which fences the northern sea — made, for the most part, 
one must suppose, of the detritus of a barrier range of pre- 
historic islands, themselves compact of such a soft lime- 
stone as that on which Alexandria is built. Coming into 
it out of the great Nile-flats, one thinks it a veritable high- 
land, and climbing painfully over the sliding dunes hardly 



THE NILE FENS 113 

notes that every deeper hollow falls again to the Nile level. 
Yet so it isj and, therefore, palms may be planted deep, 
and they will bear abundantly, though the dunes, in their 
constant eastward progression, bury them to the spring of 
their plumes. In the troughs of the sand-waves potatoes 
and tomatoes are grown behind long alignments of shelter- 
ing wattles ; nor is a wild waxy pasture wanting, whose 
roots trail to incredible length, even to fifty or sixty feet, 
through the sand to seek the ground moisture which some- 
where will not fail them. You may find a similar tract by 
taking train from Alexandria towards Rosetta, and see a 
village like Baltim in Edku by its lake ; but there is no 
view west of the Nile to rival that from the higher dunes 
of Burullos ; nothing like that great forest of sand-choked 
palms in the hollow that lies between the lake dunes and 
the higher golden range by the open sea ; nothing like that 
ample prospect of the Lake Burullus itself, with its north- 
ern fringe of fisher-settlements, its beach alive with fishing- 
folk, and its waters dotted with their hulls and sails. It is 
no longer familiar Egypt, as one knows it, but a land of 
even more primeval life and even less change. 




PORT SAID; THE SUEZ CANAL ; SUEZ; 
AND ISMAILIA 

VILLIERS STUJRT 

E entered the harbour of Port Said where we 
stopped to coal. While this unpleasant process 
was going on, most of us went on shore to in- 
vestigate the humours of this strange town, which has 
sprung up like a mushroom spawned by the Suez Canal. 
It was a starlit evening, and the long straight thoroughfare, 
which extends at right angles with the landing-place, was 
brilliantly illuminated and looked very pretty. It seemed 
to consist almost entirely of cafes chantants^ in most of 
which were orchestras of instrumental music, composed 
of German and Hungarian girls, many of them pretty. 
Visitors are expected to take something for the good of the 
house, so we sat at little tables and sipped cura^oa punch, 
which the ladies admitted to be less disagreeable than they 
expected. The excitement of the roulette table was not 
absent from these cafes. We saw some queer-looking 
people about, and accidents with stilettos are not uncom- 
mon. 

There is a floating population of Levantines, Greek and 
Italian, of sinister aspect, very handy with knife and re- 
volver, also of loose dogs and jackasses, the latter careering 
about the streets all night and not unfrequently contributing 
their well-known solo to the concerts of the cafes chantants. 




< 
H 

o 

0-1 



PORT SAID; THE SUEZ CANAL; SUEZ 115 

Our punch finished, we made a tour of the shops. The 
ladies bought Maltese lace and Syrian embroidery and the 
gentlemen invested in Turkish cigarette tobacco. One of 
the most unexpected products of this curious place were 
woodcocks. There were stalls full of them : they are 
brought from Albania. We returned loaded with blood- 
oranges and other fruit, to find everything on board covered 
with coal-dust. Barges of that indispensable mineral 
were being ferried to and fro by crews of naked black 
men, screaming and vociferating like very fiends, their 
ebony features illuminated by the lurid glare from the 
bonfires which light them at their work. The scene 
might have done duty as a tableau from the infernal re- 
gions.' 

1 From Port Said to Cairo by Rail. — We are told that we are within 
ten minutes of Port Said; yet we see nothing but water — then, all at 
once, a collection of houses, and a low-lying line of sand, and the ship is 
in the channel, steaming between buoys. De Lesseps' statue dominates 
the harbour; one outstretched finger points to his work, the great water- 
way that joins East to West. 

Boats crowd round, full of shouting Arabs, and the moment the ship 
stops there ensues a rush of frenzied hawkers and minstrels. 

Port Said is hardly a place at which to stay. The town is not interest- 
ing, and it has few amusements. 

One unique phenomenon there is at Port Said, the coaling by night — 
a hurricane of flying natives, lit up by braziers that flare through the un- 
canny mist of coal-dust. They fling their boards against the ship, rush up 
with full baskets, hurl the coal into the bunkers, and rush down again. 
It is a very inferno of ordered haste and efficiency. 

Leaving Port Said, the line runs parallel to the Suez Canal and the 
" Sweetwater " Canal, Port Said's only source of fresh water. On the 
right is at first the shallow Lake Menzaleh, where one sees, in the winter 
time, quantities of water-fowl, and now and again pelicans and flamingoes 



ii6 EGYPT 

Next morning at sunrise we proceeded on our way for 
Suez up the Canal, which is well worth seeing and full of 
interest. One peculiarity of the trip through it is, that as 
one sits on a lounge-chair on the deck of a 3,500-ton ocean 
steamer in a salt-water ditch so narrow that one can pitch 
a biscuit on shore, there pass before one, like a panorama, 
all the phenomena of desert-life : sand storms, Bedouins, 
strings of camels, boundless horizons of desolate plains, etc. 
Along the canal grows a scanty fringe of tamarisk bushes, 
and amongst these were many camels browsing, apparently 
in a half-wild state, but, of course, they belong to some one 
or other. 

■We had several opportunities of landing and of examin- 
ing the geological formation of the Isthmus of Suez, and of 
the sand and mud thrown out of the bed of the canal in the 
process of excavation. The latter is just the stufF that 
would be formed at the bottom of a brackish estuary. It is 

of vivid plumage — rose, scarlet, and flame-coloured. Kantarah, about 
twenty-five miles from Port Said, is one of the points in the ancient 
caravan route betvi^een Egypt and Syria. It is still used by Bedouins. 
Pharaohs, Persians, Arabs, even the French under Napoleon, have used 
that track. It is curious to see ships gliding slowly and silently past, as 
it were, over the sand. One hardly realizes that they are on a canal. 

From Ismailia to Abou-Hammad is all sand. Tel-el- Kebir is in this 
stretch, and one can still see traces of the British trenches on the right- 
hand side of the line. 

After Zagazig — a large railway and commercial centre — the country is 
really no more than a vast market garden; almost every yard is under 
cultivation. Benha, the junction for Alexandria, is the only town of im- 
portance after Zagazig; and half an hour after Benha the train enters the 
suburb of Choubra, and at last steams under the great single arch of Cairo 
station. — Egypt and How to See It ( 1910). 



PORT SAID; THE SUEZ CANAL; SUEZ 117 

full of cockle-shells of quite modern pattern, and such as 
might be dredged up now from any of the lagoons at the 
mouths of the Nile. The impression produced upon our 
minds was that what is now the Isthmus of Suez has been 
at no very remote period a shallow sea, cutting off by its 
channel the continent of Africa, and making it an island. 
So perfectly modern were the shells that we suspect the 
Isthmus has emerged since the valley of the Nile has been 
occupied by man ; that the process has been gradual ; and 
that, even in the days of Moses, the width of the Isthmus 
was considerably narrower than now, and was still a chain 
of lagoons such as would account for the expression of 
Pharaoh with reference to the fugitive Hebrews : " They 
are entangled in the land." 

The situation of several of them has been brought to 
light by the canal of Lesseps, which has refilled them. 
They are strung on the canal, like beads on a necklace, 
along its whole course, and some of these are extensive 
enough to have compelled a fugitive multitude, pressed by 
a pursuing army, to endeavour to ford them, rather than 
to expose their flank to attack. Moreover, the sea they 
crossed is not in the original Hebrew called the Red 
Sea, but the Sea of Weeds, a term applicable to a reedy 
lagoon, but not to the clear blue waters of the Gulf of 
Suez. 

We were fortunate enough to reach Lake Timsah the 
same evening at sunset and it was a sunset worth remem- 
bering. The sinking orb, the western sky, and the whole 



ii8 EGYPT 

surface of the lake were of one uniform blood-red, of an in- 
tensity that cannot be exaggerated. The following after- 
noon we reached Suez. Next day we visited the bazaar, 
accompanied by a native dragoman in a gorgeous orange 
silk turban, who was greeted by the Suez gamins as " Mag- 
nificent George." 

The Suez bazaar is very amusing, and as thoroughly 
Oriental as anything to be seen in the East. There are 
specimens of all the races from both sides of the Red Sea : 
Nubians, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks, etc., in every variety of 
Eastern costume, and in all the colours of the rainbow. 
The costumes would, most of them, do capitally for a cal- 
ico ball; the difficulty would be to match the complexions. 
The bazaars contained native silks and embroideries, carpets 
from Jeddah, and various stones, beads and baubles, brought 
by the pilgrims from Mecca. We had our monograms cut 
in Arabic characters on a native seal. 

Suez is full of goats and sheep which had no visible 
means of subsistence, for Suez stands between the desert 
and the Red Sea. The climate is almost rainless, and there 
is not so much as a blade of grass to be seen in the neigh- 
bourhood. Our visit to the bazaar ended, " Magnificent 
George " was commanded to lead us to the shores of the Red 
Sea, which he did under protest, — an unwilling Moses. 
We wandered along its rippling edge gathering some very 
beautiful shells, corals and seaweed, and meditating on 
Pharaoh and the Israelites, whose emancipation was so dis- 
astrous to that monarch. 



PORT SAID; THE SUEZ CANAL; SUEZ 119 

From Suez we took the railway to Cairo via Ismailia ' 
and stayed over night at this desert city, which is thor- 
oughly French. It is a curious combination. Around ex- 
tends that wilderness which constitutes the border land be- 
tween Asia and Africa ; in front is the Lake of Crocodiles, 
whose name suggests a former connection with the Nile. 
It must have been once a fresh-water lake. These reptiles 
never inhabit salt water. Lake Timsah, in the centre of 
the Isthmus, was probably fed in ancient times by the Nile; 
hence it was a suitable haunt for crocodiles. Lake Men- 
zaleh, and all the sheets of water between it and Timsah, 
communicated with the Mediterranean, and were brackish, 

iFrom Ismailia to Suez by Rail. — The journey takes about two 
hours, through desert land all the way. Bordering the line are stretches 
of marsh. To the right are the hills, red-brown ; to the left the canal. 
One can only see the canal momentarily where it appears, blue as the 
curved blade of a Damascus sword. The only sign of the waterway is 
the mast or funnel of some ship gliding slowly from station to station. 

The wind blows keen, clean, and increasing across the line. At last 
come fields, trees, houses, and then Suez (Suez Town) — a dusty old town, 
stretching in untidy detachments down to the sea. 

The train passes through the town and comes out upon a long causeway 
leading to Suez Docks. 

Round the docks is a small town in itself, and the cleanest, pleasantest 
part of Suez. Here are the Canal Company's and other offices, with the 
houses of the officials facing a shady boulevard. In front passes the cease- 
less stream of shipping, entering and leaving the canal. 

Look seavirard. The anchorage is bounded on the right by the high 
red cliffs of Gebel Attakah ; on either side the more distant hills tail off, 
gray-blue, towards the open sea, where runs the road to India and the 
Far East. 

The Suez Canal: From Suez to Port Said. — The canal by 
day is not profoundly exciting. The progress is slow, the scenery un- 
varied. One should start in the late afternoon, and take advantage of the 



I20 EGYPT 

being largely diluted with Nile water; they were not too 
salt for the growth of reeds. 

The Bitter Lakes, on the other hand, fed from the Red 
Sea and further concentrated by evaporation, were intensely 
salt. It may be that it was these that were christened by 
the Israelites the waters of Marah, for we are not told that 
Marah was a spring. In the midst of such ancient associ- 
ations stands this brand-new French town, laid out in per- 
fectly straight broad streets lined with handsome trees, and 
in the centre is a square full of beautiful flowers. 

night-time. For tlie night reveals the one feature of the voyage at its best 
— the Bitter Lakes. After a slow and toilsome journey through the nar- 
row passage, the ship emerges suddenly into the open. The search-light 
plays full, brilliant, on the depth of dark sky and water. 

Myriad white shapes appear ahead, flitting, dipping, skimming, nearing 
the boat, then retreating, resting on the water, quitting it, with slow-flap- 
ping wings. When they are quite close, under full play of the light, you 
can see that they are pelicans, with their wide wings, long beak, and 
pouch beneath. 

Here the ships do not stop to exchange courtesies, or combat precedence 
for tying up. A big P. and O., or a long lean German Lloyd sheers past 
almost at full speed, ablaze with light. The pilot boat hangs on for dear 
life, while the pilot ascends or descends the ladder like a trained acrobat. 
At length one's own boat makes the entrance, and from the Bitter Lakes 
the canal is placid, narrow and uneventful as far as Port Said. 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 

A. B. DE GUERFILLE 

WHAT changes in the space of a few years ! 
One hears of the mushroom growth of Ameri- 
can towns, but where before has one seen an 
ancient Eastern capital suddenly take a fresh lease of life, 
born again, as it were, to a new existence, as if touched by 
a magic wand ? At first sight the traveller who revisits 
Cairo after a few years' interval will not notice any great 
difference. At the huge station there is the same hurly- 
burly, the same cries, the same native porters seizing your 
luggage. On leaving, the same smell of the East, of the 
towns innocent of drains, the. same terrible dust. But all 
this is soon forgotten and one comes once more under the 
indefinable charm which enters into every traveller who 
finds himself in the midst of these new and strange scenes. 
The principal street, Shariah-Kamel, and the Place de 
rOpera, have not greatly changed. This is still the liveli- 
est corner of the town, where from morn to eve a huge 
and strange crowd presses and pushes its way along the 
pavements. It would be impossible, even in dreams, to 
picture anything more animated than this living panorama, 
where East meets West, and meeting seems to mix one in 
the other. 



122 EGYPT 

The eye is first struck by the thousands of little red spots 
on which hang tassels of black silk. It is the tarbouche, 
head-covering of so many different types that it seems as if 
all Africa had given rendezvous here. The majority are of 
the sterner sex, with nothing Oriental in their dress but the 
tarbouche ; otherwise they are clothed as the ordinary 
European, whilst many of them attain to the last thing in 
elegance. 

In this extraordinary crowd are negroes, Arabs in their 
flowing robes, Jews with shifty eyes, eunuchs, Egyptian 
soldiers, well set up ; and, making their way amongst all 
these Orientals, tourists of every country and speaking 
every tongue, young foreign girls with a knowing look 
about them, mondaines and demi-mondaines^ the latter with a 
smile indifferently for black or white. Here and there a 
native woman, hidden beneath her veil, passes rapidly, 
silently, mysteriously. 

The terraces of the cafes are crowded, and here one 
drinks the eternal Turkish coffee whilst smoking the eternal 
Egyptian cigarette. But to talk is difficult, for the street- 
hawkers make an unholy din. They sell everything. 
Nothing comes amiss : lottery tickets, post-cards, wax 
vestas, dates, fruits, newspapers, honey, even fish and meat. 
Some exhibit trained monkeys ; others, Italians, scrape an 
outrageous fiddle j an army of bootblacks swarms round ; 
and also, as in front of the Grand Hotel in Paris, a crowd 
of guides, ready, for a ^^^ piastres, to show the stranger all 
the curiosities of Cairo. In the roadway also all is move- 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 123 

ment. Victorias with smart pairs, the little carts serving 
as omnibuses to the natives, some crowded with men, 
others with women and children, bicyclists, occasional 
motors, a countless multitude of donkeys ridden by every 
kind of two-legged being, camels loaded to within the last 
proverbial strav/, — all these cross and recross without end. 
With an ear-splitting clang of bells, the electric trams re- 
mind us that Cairo is now a modern town. These tram- 
ways belong to a Belgian Company, who, whilst making 
a very good thing out of them, simply ignore the comfort 
of the public. The cars are dirty arid the conductors un- 
civil. There is a compartment reserved for " ladies of the 
harem," but foreign ladies are not permitted to use them. 
To sit next a flea-bitten negro is anything but pleasant, and 
in Alexandria, where first- and second-class compartments 
are provided, things are much better. 

In the Shariah-Kamel, the Place de I'Opera, and the 
neighbouring streets there are magnificent shops. The 
shop windows of the jewellers are particularly fine ; per- 
fumery and chemists' shops abound, but more numerous 
still are the cake-shops. There you will find delicious 
nougat and " Turkish delight," but to get them you will 
have to search far ; the whole of the fronts of the shops are 
invaded by Swiss chocolates. Gala Peter and milk choco- 
lates have conquered Egypt with her sweet tooth. 

Amongst the shopkeepers, the palm undoubtedly must 
go to the chemist. Their name is legion, and they grow 
fat in robbing a patient public with a most charming 



124 EGYPT 

grace. Their cynicism surpasses belief, and their business 
in life may be summed up as stealing always and poisoning 
often. Last winter, when a native child happened to be 
run over by a carriage, the bystanders wished to carry the 
poor little creature into a chemist's shop ; but the chemist, 
hard as it is to believe it possible, shut his door in their 
faces. The child died ; if immediate help had been avail- 
able he might have been saved, but— a native ! What is 
that ? And this chemist now continues happy and content 
to pocket his ill-gotten gains. 

But if this corner of Cairo, so picturesque and lively, has 
not changed, it is not so with the rest of the town. The 
whole population seems to have been bitten with a mania 
for building. The streets are crowded with builders' carts, 
full of material, and on all sides, surrounded by scaffold- 
ing, are houses under construction. Huge flats, immense 
palaces, superb hotels, have arisen where, a year or two 
ago, nothing but gardens were to be seen. 

Egypt, at this moment, is passing through a period of 
great prosperity. Every one is coining money, and as the 
value of land and property is increasing daily, all those who 
have capital, and they are many, hasten to build. 

A short time ago Egyptians of the middle-class were 
either ignorant of, or indifferent to, comfort. Families of 
twenty or twenty-five lived together in a miserable dwelling 
of a few rooms, in unsanitary quarters. To-day all that is 
changed: families divide; the married children now wish 
a home of their own, choosing when they can the new parts 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 125 

of the town, healthy and airy. Thousands of persons, who 
formerly slept on the floor of their rooms in the Turkish 
fashion, prefer now to have European beds, whilst knives 
and forks have replaced the more primitive instruments of 
thumb and forefinger. 

The extraordinary growth of the town shows no sign of 
teasing, and it still advances even into the surrounding 
desert, to the conquest of which energetic capitalists have 
set their minds. Boghos Nubar Pacha, son of the cele- 
brated statesman, is at the head of a syndicate which has 
recently acquired huge tracts of land in the desert, at the 
gates of Cairo, where they intend to build a new quarter, 
which will, in time, be a small town in itself. 

Two things above all Cairo formerly lacked, water and 
drains. I do not know if the latter will ever exist, but the 
question of the former, thanks to Messrs. Suares, the 
wealthy bankers, has already been solved. 

In 1898, having obtained a concession for supplying 
water to the town of Tantah, they brought over from 
Switzerland an engineer, M. Abel, of Zurich. This gen- 
tleman one day announced that, following on the observa- 
tions he had made, he was convinced that under the Nile, 
at a great depth, and following the same course, there was 
another river, a second Nile, not a Nile thick and muddy, 
but a Nile made clear and pure by the beds of sand and 
other formations through which it had passed. Capital 
was wanted to make sure of the correctness of these theo- 
ries, and to ascertain the quantity of water available, in 



126 EGYPT 

good and bad years, from this underground river. Messrs. 
Suares did not hesitate to supply the necessary funds, and 
the works then undertaken by M. Abel soon proved that 
he had not been mistaken. The subterranean Nile was 
proved to exist, its water to be excellent, and its volume 
sufficient to furnish drinking water, if necessary, to the 
whole of Egypt. 

After Tantah and Mansourah, Cairo is to-day supplied 
almost entirely by the new Water Company, and now, in 
nearly every house, the turning of a tap is sufficient to ob- 
tain a supply of pure water ad libitum. Messrs. Suares had 
the satisfaction, besides the very pleasant one of making 
money, of learning from the statistics of the Sanitary De- 
partment that in each of the quarters where the new water 
supply had been introduced the death rate had decreased 
enormously. One shudders at the thought that only yes- 
terday the inhabitants of Cairo, rich and poor alike, were 
dependent on the muddy water of the Nile, brought to their 
doors in goat-skins by the Sakkas. 

During the few months which constitute the season, the 
hotels are the centre of the fashionable world, and for the 
time Cairo approaches nearer to a ville d'eau than a capital. 
One must also recognize that these hotels have an irresistible 
attraction. Large and beautifully furnished, they combine 
the comforts of the West with the luxury of the East. It 
is only a ^ew years since Cairo possessed only one really 
good hotel, Shepheard's, built in the centre of the town, in 
the middle of gardens which at one time formed part of the 






WATER-SELLERS, CAIRO 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 127 

Palace of Princess Kiamil, daughter of Mohamed AH. The 
place is historic, for the Princess, so it is said, was a mod- 
ern Marguerite of Navarre, amorous, and lover of strong 
young men. 

For many years Shepheard's wns the meeting-place of all 
the best known people who passed through Cairo, and its 
name is a household word throughout the world. Its des- 
tinies are to-day in the hands of a man who knows his 
business well- — M. Charles Baehler, who is the head and 
leading spirit of the Egyptian Hotel Company, Limited, 
which also own the Ghezireh Palace. This Palace ! what 
memories cling around it ! In a few weeks, at the com- 
mand of Khedive Ismail, and as if by magic, it rose from 
the ground, in the centre of the magnificent Ghezireh Park 
on the banks of the Nile, a fitting dwelling for its guest, 
the Empress Eugenie, who had arrived in order to be pres- 
ent at the opening of the Suez Canal. It was there that 
those /etes^ the finest the world has ever seen, had their be- 
ing. What a setting for a hotel ! Shepheard's and the 
Ghezireh, these two alone might have sufficed for the glory 
of hotel life in Cairo, or even in a town of ten times the 
size. But one day there arrived on the scene a man with 
brains, and the courage to back them, who said to himself: 
" That is very fine, that is very beautiful, but there is room 
in Cairo for more great hotels." And he built the Savoy 
Hotel. This man was George Nungovich Bey, the Na- 
poleon of the Egyptian hotel industry, and to-day one of 
the most influential and richest men in Cairo. 



128 EGYPT 

Besides the Savoy, M. Nungovich has in Cairo two other 
hotels, the Continental, in the Place de I'Opera, and the 
Hotel d'Angleterre, in a quieter situation, but quite up to 
date. 

As a matter of fact the hotels hardly suffice to lodge the 
enormous crowd of Europeans and Americans who flock to 
Cairo for the winter. Last season they were hard pressed 
to find lodgings for all, and I have been told that at one 
time the old sleeping-cars were requisitioned and played the 
role of improvised hotels. The people who thus invade 
Egypt represent what the hotelkeepers call " une clientele de 
grand luxe." One must, in fact, have money and plenty of 
it to pass the winter in Egypt, and those who come from 
all the corners of the earth to enjoy the delicious climate 
have a long purse and spend with a free hand. Luxury 
and display, an uninterrupted succession of balls and fetes^ 
such is the life of Cairo in winter. 

Besides the rich clique of the hotels, Cairo society has 
others of which the most important are the " Official," the 
" English," and the " Native." It is difficult to give to 
the last a suitable name. It is composed of all the foreign 
families, rich and hospitable, for the most part Greeks and 
Levantines, settled in Egypt for many years, and in whose 
hands are most of the large commercial and industrial con- 
cerns, as also, in a special degree, the financial. They 
possess magnificent houses, almost palaces, and live in the 
greatest luxury. There are in this group many charming 
women, very interesting and decidedly elegant, whilst the 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 129 

men are remarkable for their intelligence. The origin of 
many of these fortunes, though not unknown or even for- 
gotten, is wisely hidden by a thick veil, which old residents 
occasionally amuse themselves by lifting for the entertain- 
ment of curious persons like myself. Then it is that they 
tickle your ears with stories of which the heroes, bearers 
of names well known and respected, proud of their titles 
and decorations, strong in their relationships and friends, 
appear in the early stages of their careers as nothing more 
nor less than robbers, smugglers and coiners. 

Charming, indeed, is the tale of the bad Egyptian coins 
of which millions, stamped in Europe, entered Egypt in the 
hollow legs of iron bedsteads. When the Government, un- 
able longer to recognize its own money, decided to issue a 
new coinage, and when the coiners, in too great a hurry, 
put into circulation their imitations of the new money 
before the real coins had been issued by the Government, 
the Minister of Finance was obliged to declare that the new 
money issued was not his, and that he was quite unaware 
of where it had come from. 

Then there is the story of the foreign Consul, poor as a 
church mouse, who one fine day locked up a whole family 
of his own compatriots, a family immensely wealthy, whose 
little crimes he had found out, but whom he released at 
dawn, one does not of course know quite why — but the 
poverty-stricken Consul sent in his resignation, and is to- 
day the proprietor of several of the finest villas in one of 
the most charming spots on the Adriatic. Nice little tale. 



130 EGYPT 

is it not ? But after all, what does it matter ? The elders, 
those who have struggled and succeeded at a time when 
every one robbed more or less, are to-day very old. To- 
morrow they will have gone, and another generation, well 
brought up, highly educated, elegant, fashionable to the 
tips of their fingers, will not be responsible for the kind of 
money which their fathers used. Do not let us dig too 
deep. Out of a dunghill a rose may grow — and many 
another beautiful thing. And besides, as every one knows, 
money has no smell, and less even in Egypt than else- 
where. 

The English set (I do not refer here to the official world), 
numerous and important, look down with contempt on the 
native families. In their eyes, Egyptians, Greeks, Turks, 
Armenians, all are niggers. I am not joking, and, extra- 
ordinary as it may seem. Englishmen, intelligent, educated 
and charming, will speak of a Greek as " that black man," 
or " that nigger." And there is no way of changing them. 

Looked down upon in its turn by the official set, the 
English colony suffices unto itself and lives, as it were, cut 
off, enjoying all the sports on which it dotes. It drives, 
rides, sails, it has football, tennis, polo, and remains happy, 
contented and healthy. 

The amusements of Cairo, numerous and varied, cater 
for every taste. I have already spoken of the balls and 
fetes given by the hotels, each one endeavouring to outdo 
the other in lavishness and ingenuity. 

The climate on the one hand, with its warm and sunny 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 131 

days, and, on the other, the Anglo-American element keen 
on all manner of sports and very numerous, naturally lead 
to many out-of-door meetings. At tea-time, the terraces 
of the Ghezireh Palace are invaded by a fashionable and 
cosmopolitan crowd, vi^ho amuse themselves listening to the 
music and still more to scandal. The Palace is situated on 
the Island of Ghezireh, a park in itself, of which one part 
only belongs to it. A huge space is set aside for the Khedi- 
vial Sporting Club, to which any visitor to Cairo may be- 
long. Here there are excellent tennis-courts and croquet 
lawns, a golf course, polo ground, and lastly a race-course. 
Matches of all sorts, besides races, are continually taking 
place, and attract a large crowd of players and pretty 
Women. This is one of the most charming and popular 
spots in Cairo. 

There are two excellent clubs, the Turf and the Khedi- 
vial. The first, although numbering amongst its numbers 
several Europeans and Americans, is essentially English ; 
and, considering the contempt which they profess for the 
Oriental races, it goes without saying that its doors are 
closed to all Egyptians. The Khedivial, on the other 
hand, counts amongst its members, not only well-known 
foreigners, but numbers of Princes, Pashas, Egyptians and 
Turks. Play is high. When Lord Cromer consented to 
be a patron of the Turf Club it was, I am told, on one 
condition, and that was that there should be no gambling. 
The promise then made has no doubt been forgotten, for 
card-playing is now very much in vogue. 



132 EGYPT 

The Khedivial Theatre, much criticised but much fre- 
quented, has generally each winter a remarkably good pro- 
gramme. The season is divided into two parts, the one 
given up to Opera, the other to Comedy and Drama. The 
interior, of white and gold, very pretty, is surrounded with 
two tiers of boxes, let by subscription to the elite of Cairo 
society j and it must be admitted that when the feminine 
rank and fashion of the town are gathered within its walls, 
dressed in the latest mode, and flashing with superb jewels, 
real or otherwise, the sight is a magnificent one. 

The Arab quarter and the bazaars are always interesting 
for strangers, but ladies ought never to go there alone, un- 
der pain of being handled by fingers more expert than clean. 
The mere fact of being in the bazaars is for a foreigner a 
curious sensation. The narrow streets, bordered with 
shops open to the air, filled with gaudy goods ; the inde- 
scribable smells, mixture of attar of roses, fried fish, scented 
tobacco and filth; the strange swarming crowd of Orientals 
and Africans with skins tawny or black who invade the 
narrow pavements and the roadway, the drivers crying, 
shouting, cracking their whips to make a way through the 
midst of the indilFerent mass, and with difficulty avoiding 
running them down, presents a striking and unforgettable 
picture of life, movement, colours and smells. The ba- 
zaars themselves are long alleys, passages where one has to 
watch one's feet, and on each side of which are the shops, 
where all the products of the East are exposed for sale, not 
to mention the German imitations, very cheap and very 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 133 

nasty. Here are carpets, curtains, carved wood inlaid with 
mother-of-pearl and ivory, old weapons ; there again per- 
fumes, jewels, precious stones; whilst a little further on the 
eye is attracted by sandals of brilliant red leather and grace- 
ful form, cloths, Arab robes, fez ; and lastly the vendors 
of objects in exquisitely carved bronze and copper. Here 
also are vases, lamps, huge trays, coffee services, flower- 
pots of varied and charming designs. At certain places the 
carvers, seated at the doors of their shops, are seen busy at 
their work. 

The scene is intensely interesting, though the bazaars at 
Cairo are much inferior to those of Constantinople. It is 
also necessary to remark that it is not in the bazaars that 
the finest work of the East is to be found, but only the 
cheapest, and not even that if the buyer has not all his wits 
about him, for in no place in the world is there to be found 
a bigger thief and cleverer rascal than the bazaar merchant. 
Those who wish to purchase anything first-class will find 
it outside the bazaars. Opposite the Savoy Hotel, for in- 
stance, there is the shop of Spartali and Co., where the 
most exquisite rugs and carpets can be had. These, of 
course, are not manufactured in Egypt, but in Smyrna from 
where they are sent all over the world. It is safe to say, 
however, that some of the finest specimens of the modern, 
as w^ell as of the ancient, art of carpet weaving are to be 
seen in Cairo. 

To all those who are interested in Arabic art, so dainty 
and so exquisite, I should advise a visit to the " Musee 



134 EGYPT 

Arabe," and the Mosques, where they will find many 
treasures in the way of sculptures in stone, wood, and 
metal, paintings, and wonderful gilt work. 

It goes without saying that in the country par excellence 
of excavations and discoveries archsological and historical, 
the Museum is intensely interesting. Once more M. 
Maspero has taken up the work, and never has there been 
a head of a department more esteemed and better loved. 

The Museum occupies to-day an immense building, ad- 
mirably situated, and only recently finished. There are to 
be found the treasures without number which the picks of 
the savants have unearthed from their hiding-places, where 
for centuries they have rested in peace. Here can be seen 
in the crowded halls all the history of Egyptian civilization 
stretching back for thousands of years b. c. Her kings and 
queens, her princes and princesses, her soldiers and priests, 
warriors and conquests, her funerals and her feasts, all are 
there in the shape of mummies with golden masks, statues 
of stone, granite and bronze, of bas-reliefs wonderfully 
worked, of commemorative tablets, of animals, flowers, 
furnishing, and tools of every manner and kind. 

There is, to my mind, no more delicious road in the 
world than the large and lovely' avenue which leads from 
Cairo to the Pyramids of Ghizeh, constructed at the en- 
trance to the Desert. Along its length of seven miles are 
superb and lofty trees. At all hours of the day it is full of 
life : in the morning, ladies and gentlemen out for a canter j 
mules, donkeys and strings of camels, going and coming 



CAIRO AND ITS PLEASURES 135 

from the market. In the afternoon, fashionable Cairo, 
walking, driving or motoring, and on the left the electric 
tramway with its note of modernity. This magnificent 
road was made in a few weeks at the time of the opening 
of the Suez Canal by the Khedive Isniail, in order that the 
Empress Eugenie might drive comfortably to the Pyramids. 
The Pyramids ! what varied spectacles they have seen in 
the forty odd centuries before the exploits of Napoleon and 
since ' Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, French, Eng- 
lish, all have come, one by one, to pitch their tents and un- 
furl their flags; whilst to-day, tourists of these and many 
other nations congregate in their thousands, fraternizing and 
happy, joining in a pilgrimage of curiosity and pleasure. 

At the foot of the Pyramids, on the borders of the desert 
is one of the finest hotels in Egypt, Mena House. At the 
tea-hour its terraces are crowded with a gay and brilliant 
throng. The large and comfortable salons^ the delicious 
Moorish dining-room, the excellent food, the open-air 
swimming bath, the golf course, the tennis-courts, the 
croquet lawns, all go to make a stay at Mena House one of 
the most pleasant incidents of a trip to Egypt. The stables 
are excellent, and the charges reasonable. Carriages, hacks, 
donkeys, camels, and sand-carts^ the last small vehicles, 
with wide flattened wheels, enabling them to pass over the 
sand without sinking, and by their means many a pleasant 
excursion can be made into the Desert. There are often 
at Mena House sporting meetings, which are very popular. 
The camel races are particularly amusing. These animals 



136 EGYPT 

seem to understand perfectly what is going on, and are as 
keen on winning as their riders. Last winter a camel, fu- 
rious at being passed, seized in his teeth the leg of the 
jockey of his more speedy rival, and bit it with fury. 

It is by moonlight that a stroll in the Desert is so charm- 
ing when the Sphinx and the Pyramids rise mysteriously 
from out the Desert. It is the lovers' hour, and after a 
good dinner at Mena House, couples arm-in-arm seek the 
solitude and the shadow of the huge monsters of stone who, 
for thousands of years, have served as a shelter for their 
kind. What a thousand pities that they cannot speak ! or 
perhaps, it is just as well. 

There is another charming and popular spot, within half 
an hour's rail from Cairo, also in the Desert, but in an op- 
posite direction. This is Helouan, celebrated for its sul- 
phur waters. The baths, as well as the Grand Hotel and 
the Hotel des Bains, belong to the " Societe des Hotels 
Nungovich," and are perfect in every way. Here there is 
no dust, no noise, no dirt ; the air is dry, bracing, and pure, 
and the calm ideal. There is another excellent hotel, the 
Tewfik Palace, besides numerous pensions. 

Helouan lies at the foot of the mountains, on one of 
which a sanatorium. El Ayat, has recently been opened. 
In this wonderful situation, invalids and convalescents can 
find every comfort and convenience. There are, of course, 
the ubiquitous golf links, also a race-course, which, now and 
then, attracts the fashionable crowd from Cairo. 



MOSQUES OF CAIRO 

SIR I. GARDNER WILKINSON 

CAIRO is said to contain about four hundred 
mosques. The principal are the Touloun, the 
Ezher, the Hassanein, the Sharawee, Moulaiyad, 
and those of the Sultans Hassan, El Ghouri, and El Kaloon. 

The first in point of antiquity is the mosque of Ahmed 
ebn e' Touloun. It is said to be built on the plan of the 
Kaaba, at Mecca. The centre is an extensive open court 
about one hundred paces square, surrounded by colonnades ; 
those on three of the sides consisting of two rows of col- 
umns twenty-five paces deep, and that on the eastern end 
of five rows, all supporting pointed arches. Around the 
mosque is an outer wall, at each angle of which rose one of 
the minarets, that on the northwest corner being the one 
used for the call to prayer. This mosque is the oldest in 
Cairo, having been founded in the year 879 a. d., as is at- 
tested by two Cufic inscriptions on the walls of the court. 

The wooden pulpit, and the dome over the front in the 
centre of the quadrangle bear the date of 696 of the Hegira 
in Arabic characters. 

The minaret of the Touloun, which rises from the exte- 
rior wall of circuit, has a singular appearance, owing to the 
staircase winding round the outside. Its novel form is said 



138 EGYPT 

to have originated in the absent habits of the founder. His 
Wizeer had observed him rolling up a piece of parchment in 
a spiral form, and having remarked : " It was a pity his 
majesty had no better employment," the king replied, "So 
far from trifling, I have been thinking that a minaret 
erected on this principle would have many advantages ; I 
could even ride up it on horseback : and I wish that of my 
new mosque to be built of the same form." 

From its summit is one of the finest views of the townj 
and though inferior in extent, it possesses an advantage 
over that from the platform of Joseph's Hall, in having the 
citadel as one of its principal features. 

The new mosque built by Mohammed Aly on the site of 
Joseph's Hall consists of an open square surrounded by a 
single row of columns, ten on the north and south, thirteen 
on the west and twelve on the east, where a door leads to 
the inner part, or house of prayer. The columns have a 
fancy capital supporting round arches, and the whole, with 
the exception of the outer walls, is of Oriental alabaster. 
But it has not the pure Oriental character of other works 
in Cairo ; and it excites admiration for the materials rather 
than for the style of its architecture. It was to make room 
for this mosque that Joseph's Hall, a lofty building sup- 
ported on numerous handsome granite columns, was re- 
moved in 1829. But the carelessness, or want of skill, in 
taking down the columns, caused the destruction of the 
greater part of them. 

From the platform is a grand and commanding view of 




i4 

o 
S 

z 
o 

o 

H 



MOSQUES OF CAIRO 139 

the city and the surrounding country, taking in the arsenal 
immediately below, the Roomaylee, and the fine mosque of 
Sultan Hassan, just outside the gates of the citadel, the nu- 
merous minarets of Cairo, and, in the distance, the Pyra- 
mids, with the valley of the Nile. 

The finest mosque in Cairo is unquestionably the Jama- 
t-e' Saltan Hassam, immediately below the Citadel, between 
the Roomaylee and the Soog e' Sullah. Its lofty and beauti- 
fully ornamented porch, the rich cornice of its towering 
walls, its minaret, and the arches of its spacious court must 
delight every admirer of architecture. And so impressed 
are the Cairenes with its superiority over other mosques that 
they believe the king ordered the hand of the architect to 
be cut ofF in order to prevent his building any other that 
should vie with it. 

The interior is of a different form from the mosques of 
early times, consisting of an hypaethral court, with a square 
recess on each side, covered by a noble and majestic arch, 
that on the east being much more spacious than the other 
three, and measuring sixty-nine feet five inches in span. 
At the inner end of it are the niche of the imam, who 
prays before the congregation on Friday, and the mumher 
or pulpit ; and two rows of handsome coloured glass 
vases of Syrian manufacture, bearing the name of the sultan, 
are suspended from the side walls. Behind, and form- 
ing the same part of the building is the tomb which 
bears the date of 764 of the Hegira (a. d. 1363). It is 
surmounted by a large dome of wood and plaster, on a base- 



I40 EGYPT 

ment and walls of stone, and the ornamental details are of 
the same materials. On the tomb itself is a large copy of 
the Koran, written in beautiful, distinct characters, and over 
it are suspended three of the coloured lamps. 

The blocks in the erection of this noble edifice were 
brought from the pyramids ; and though we regret that one 
monument should have been defaced in order to supply 
materials for another, we must confess that hw buildings 
could summon to their aid greater beauty to plead an ex- 
cuse, while we regret that it is not likely to be as durable 
as those ancient structures. The mosque of El Ghouri, the 
Morostin, the citadel and other buildings were indebted for 
stone for the same monuments which were to them the 
same convenient quarry as the Coliseum to the palaces at 
Rome. 

The Ezher, or " splendid " mosque, was originally 
founded by Goher el Kaed, the general of Moez about the 
year 970 ; but that which is now seen is of later date, hav- 
ing been subsequently rebuilt and considerably enlarged. 
It is of considerable size, and ornamented with numerous 
columns, which give a lightness and grace to the interior. 
It is the College of Cairo, and here the Koran is particu- 
larly studied. 

Close to the southwest angle is another handsome 
mosque j and a little further to the north is the small but 
celebrated Hassanein, dedicated to the two sons of AH, 
Hassan and Hussein, whose relics it contains. It is said 
that the head of Hussein and the hand of Hassan are pre- 




PULPIT AND SANCTUARY OF THE MOSQUE EL-MOULAIYAD 



MOSQUES OF CAIRO 141 

served there. Like the Ezher, it was built or restored at 
different periods, the last addition dating 1762, but none of 
the earliest part is now visible. The mooled or birthday of 
the Hassanein is one of the principal fetes of Cairo. The 
tomb on such occasions is always covered with the Kirweh 
or sacred envelope of embroidered cloth or velvet. 

The Moulaiyad, founded between the years 141 2 and 1420 
A. D., is a handsome mosque with pointed arches, having 
slight traces of the horseshoe form, at the base of the archi- 
volt, like many others of the pointed style at Cairo. It is 
close to the gate called Bab el-Zouileh ; which, with the two 
elegant minarets that rise above it, is a noble specimen of 
Eastern architecture. This gate was formerly the entrance 
to the city on the south side, before the quarter now con- 
necting it with the citadel was added. 

The mosque of El Ghouri stands at the extremity of the 
bazaar, called after it El Ghouri ; and, from its position, 
is one of the most picturesque buildings in Cairo. On 
approaching it by the Ghoreech, which is of more than 
ordinary breadth, you perceive the grand effect of its lofty 
walls ; and the open space in which it stands, together with 
the variety of costumes in the groups that throng that spot, 
and the grand doorway of the tomb on the opposite side, 
offer a beautiful subject for the pencil of an artist. 



"[ 



TOMBS 

G. MASPERO 

"^HE historic Egyptians regarded man as composed 
of different entities, each having its separate life 
and functions. First, there was the body ; then 
the Ka^ or double, which was a less solid duplicate of 
the corporeal form — a coloured but ethereal projection 
of the individual, reproducing him feature for feature. 
The double of a child was as a child ; the double of a 
woman was as a woman ; the double of a man was as a 
man. After the Double (Ka) came the Soul {Bi or Ba\ 
which was properly represented as a human headed bird ; 
after the Soul came the " Khu" or " the Luminous," a 
spark from the divine fire. None of these elements were 
in their own natures imperishable. Left to themselves, 
they would hasten to dissolution, and the man would thus 
die a second time ; that is to say, he would be annihilated. 
The piety of the survivors found means, however, to avert 
this catastrophe. By the process of embalmment, they 
could for ages suspend the decomposition of the body; 
while by means of prayer and offerings they saved the 
Double, the Soul, and the " Luminous " from the second 
death, and secured to them all that was necessary for the 
prolongation of their existence. The Double never left the 



TOMBS 143 

place where the mummy reposed; but the Soul and the 
" Khu " went forth to follow the gods. They, however, 
kept perpetually returning, like travellers who come home 
after an absence. The tomb was therefore a dwelling- 
house, the " Eternal House " of the dead, compared with 
which the houses of the living were but wayside inns , and 
these Eternal Houses were built after a plan which exactly 
corresponded to the Egyptian idea of the after-life. The 
Eternal House must always include the private rooms of the 
Soul, which were closed on the day of Burial, and which 
no living being could enter without being guilty of sacri- 
lege. It must also contain the reception-rooms of the 
Double, where priests and friends brought their wishes or 
their offerings ; the two being connected by a passage of 
more or less length. The arrangement of these three parts 
varied according to the period, the place, the nature of the 
ground and the caprice of each person. The rooms ac- 
cessible to the living were frequently built above ground, 
and formed a separate edifice. Sometimes they were exca- 
vated in the mountainside, as well as the tomb itself. 
Sometimes, again, the vault where the mummy lay hidden, 
and the passages leading to that vault, were in one place, 
while the place of prayer and offering stood far off in 
the plains. But whatever variety there may be found as to 
detail and arrangement, the principle is always the same. 
The tomb is a dwelling, and it is constructed in such wise 
as may best promote the well-being, and ensure the preser- 
vation, of the dead. 



144 EGYPT 

The most ancient monumental tombs are found in the 
necropolis of Memphis, between Abu Roash and Dahshur, 
and in that of Medum 5 they belong to the mastaba type. 
The mastaba is a quadrangular building, which from a 
distance might be taken for a truncated pyramid. Many 
mastabas are from thirty to forty feet in height, one hun- 
dred and fifty feet in length, and eighty feet in width ; 
while others do not exceed ten feet in height, or fifteen 
feet in length. The faces are symmetrically inclined and 
generally smooth, though sometimes the courses retreat like 
steps. The materials employed are stone or brick. 

At Gizeh the mastabas are distributed according to a 
symmetrical plan and ranged in regular streets. At Sak- 
kara, at Abusir, and at Dahshur, they are scattered irregu- 
larly over the surface of the plateau crowded in some places 
and wide apart in others. The Mussulman cemetery at 
Assiut perpetuates the like arrangement, and enables us to 
this day to realize the aspect of the Memphite necropolis 
towards the close of the ancient empire. 

The entrance faces to the eastward side. Occasionally 
it faces towards the north or south side, but never towards 
the west. In theory there should be two doors, one for 
the dead, the other for the living. In practice, the entrance 
for the dead was a mere niche, high and narrow, cut back 
in the east face near the northeast corner. The back of 
this niche is marked with vertical lines, framing in a closed 
space. Even this imitation of a door was sometimes 
omitted, and the soul was left to manage as best it might. 



TOMBS 143 

The door of the living was made more or less important, 
according to the greater or less development of the chamber 
to vi'hich it led. The chamber and door are in some cases 
represented by only a shallow recess decorated with a stela 
and a table of offerings. 

The chapel was usually small, and lost in the mass of the 
building, but no precise rule determined its size. The chapel 
was the reception-room of the Double. It was there that the 
relations, friends and priests celebrated the funerary sacri- 
fices on the days prescribed by law 5 that is to say " at the 
feasts of the commencement of the seasons ; at the feast of 
Thoth on the first day of the year; at the feast of Uaga; 
at the great feast of Sothis ; on the day of the procession 
of the god Min ; at the feast of shew-bread ; at the feasts 
of the months and the half-months and the days of the 
week." Offerings were placed in the principal room, at 
the foot of the west wall, at the exact spot leading to the 
^entrance of the " eternal home " of the dead. 

An inscription, graven upon the lintel in large readable 
characters, commemorated the name and rank of the owner. 
His portrait, either sitting or standing, was carved upon 
the jambs ; and a scene, sculptured or painted on the space 
above the door, represented him seated before a small round 
table, stretching out his hand towards the repast placed 
upon it. A flat slab, or offering table, built into the floor 
between the two uprights of the doorway, received the 
votive meats and drinks. 

The living having taken their departure, the Double was 



146 EGYPT 

supposed to come out of his house and feed. In principle, 
this ceremony was bound to be renewed year by year, till 
the end of time; but the Egyptians ere long discovered 
that this could not be. After two or three generations the 
dead of former days were neglected for the benefit of those 
more recently dead. Then, in order that the offerings 
consecrated on the day of burial might forever preserve 
their virtues, the survivors conceived the idea of drawing 
and describing them on the walls of the chapel. The 
painted or sculptured reproduction of persons and things 
ensured the reality of those persons and things for the 
benefit of the one on whose account they were executed. 
Thus the Double saw himself depicted upon the walls in 
the act of eating and drinking, and he ate and drank. This 
notion once accepted, the theologians and artists carried it 
out to the fullest extent. 

Whether large or small, whether richly decorated or not 
decorated at all, the chapel is always the dining-room — or, 
rather, the larder — to which the dead man has access when 
he feels hungry. 

On the other side of the wall was constructed a hiding- 
place in the form of either a high and narrow cell, or a 
passage without outlet. To this hiding-place archaeolo- 
gists have given the Arab name of serdab. Most mastabas 
contain but one; others contain three or four. These 
serdabs communicated neither with each other nor with the 
chapel ; and are, as it were, buried in the masonry. If 
connected at all with the outer world, it is by means of an 



TOMBS 147 

aperture in the wall about as high up as a man's head and so 
small that the hand can with difficulty pass through it. To 
this orifice came the priests, with murmured prayers and 
perfumes of incense. Within lurked the Double, ready to 
profit by these memorial rites, or to accept them through 
the medium of his statues. The portrait statues walled up 
inside the serdab became, when consecrated, the stone, or 
wooden bodies of the defunct. 

Generally the vault is reached by way of a vertical shaft 
constructed in the centre of the platform or, more rarely, 
in a corner of the chapel. The depth of this shaft varies 
from ten to one hundred feet. It is carried down through 
the masonry, it pierces the rock ; and at the bottom a low 
passage, in which it is not possible to walk upright, leads 
in a southward direction to the vault. There sleeps the 
mummy in a massive sarcophagus of limestone, red granite, 
or basalt. The furniture of the vault is of the simplest 
character, — some alabaster perfume vases ; a few cups into 
which the priest had poured drops of the various libation 
liquids offered to the dead ; some large red pottery jars for 
water ; a head-rest of wood or alabaster ; a scribe's votive 
palette. Having laid the mummy in the sarcophagus and 
cemented the lid, the workmen strewed the floor of the 
vault with the quarters of oxen and gazelles which had just 
been sacrificed. They next carefully walled up the en- 
trance into the passage and filled the shaft to the top with 
a mixture of sand, earth and stone chips. Being profusely 
watered, this mass solidified, and became an almost impene- 



148 EGYPT 

trable body of concrete. The corpse, left to itself, received 
no visits now, save from the Soul, which from time to time 
quitted the celestial regions, wherein it voyaged with the 
gods, and came down to reunite itself with the body. The 
sepulchral vault was the abode of the Soul, as the funerary 
chapel was the abode of the Double. 

Two subsequent systems replaced the mastaba throughout 
Egypt. The first preserved the chapel constructed above 
ground, and combined the pyramid with the mastaba j the 
second excavated the whole tomb in the rock, including 
the chapel. 

The necropolis quarter of Abydos in which were in- 
terred the earlier generations of the Theban Empire 
furnishes the most ancient examples of the first system. 
The tombs are built of large, black unbaked bricks, made 
without any mixture of straw or grit. 

The earliest examples of the second kind are those found 
at Gizeh among the mastabas of the Fourth Dynasty, and 
these are neither farge nor much ornamented. They begin 
to be carefully wrought about the time of the Sixth Dynasty 
and in certain distant places, as at Bersheh, Sheikh Said, 
Kasr es Sayad, Assouan, and Negadeh. The rock-cut tomb 
did not, however, attain its full development until the times 
of the last Memphite kings and the early kings of the 
Theban line. 

In these rock-cut tombs we find all the various parts of 
the mastaba. The designer selected a prominent vein of 
limestone, high enough in the cliff side to risk nothing from 



TOMBS 149 

the gradual rising of the soil, and yet low enough for the 
funeral procession to reach it without difficulty. The 
feudal lords of Minieh slept at Beni-Hassan j those of 
Khmunu at Bersheh ; those of Assiut and Elephantine at 
Assiut and in the clifF opposite Assouan. Sometimes, as at 
Assiut, Bersheh and Thebes, the tombs are excavated at vari- 
ous levels J sometimes as at Beni-Hassan they follow the 
line of the stratum, and are ranged in nearly horizontal 
terraces. 

The chapel generally consists of a single chamber, either 
square or oblong, with a flat or a slightly vaulted ceiling. 
Light is admitted only through the doorway. Sometimes a 
few pillars left standing in the rock at the time of the ex- 
cavation give this chamber the aspect of a little hypostyle 
hall. 

The series of tableaux is, on the whole, much the same 
as of old, though with certain noteworthy additions. In 
former times, when first the rules of tomb decorations were 
formulated, the notion of future retribution either did not 
exist, or was but dimly conceived. The deeds which he 
had done here on earth in no wise influenced the fate which 
awaited the man after death. Whether good or bad, from 
the moment when the funeral rites were performed and the 
necessary prayers recited, he was rich and happy. But 
when once a belief in rewards and punishments to come 
had taken possession of men's minds, they bethought them 
of the advisability of giving to each dead man the benefit of 
his individual merits. With the beginning of the New 



ISO 



EGYPT 



Empire, tableaux and inscriptions combine to immortalize 
the deeds of the owner of the tomb. Khnumhotep of Beni- 
Hassan records in full the origin of his ancestors. Kheti 
displays upon his walls all the incidents of a military 
life — parades, war-dances, sieges, and sanguinary battle 
scenes. 

When space permitted, the vault was excavated immedi- 
ately below the chapel. In the great cemeteries, as for in- 
stance at Thebes and Memphis, the superposition of these 
three parts — the chapel, the shaft, and the vault — was not 
always possible. Under the Theban dynasties, as under 
the Memphite kings, the Soul dispensed with decorations ; 
but whenever the walls of the vault are decorated, the 
figures and inscriptions are found to relate chiefly to 
the life of the Soul, and very slightly to the life of the 
Double. 

At Thebes, as in Memphis, the royal tombs are those 
which it is most necessary to study, in order to estimate 
the high degree of perfection to which the decoration of 
passages and sepulchral chambers was now carried. The 
most ancient were situate either in the plain or on the 
southern slopes of the western mountain ; and of these, 
no remains are extant. The mummies of Amenhotep I. 
and Thothmes III., of Sekenenra and Aahhotep have sur- 
vived the dwellings of solid stone design for their protec- 
tion. Towards the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, 
however, all the best places were taken up, and some un- 
occupied site in which to establish a new royal cemetery 



TOMBS 151 

had to be sought. At first they went to a considerable dis- 
tance, namely, to the end of the valley (known as the 
Western Valley), which opens from near Drah Abu '1 Neg- 
geh. Amenhotep III., Ai, and perhaps others were there 
buried. Somewhat later, they preferred to draw nearer to 
the city of the living. Behind the clifF which forms the 
northern boundary of the plain of Thebes, there lay a kind 
of rocky hollow closed in on every side and accessible from 
the outer world by only a few perilous paths. It divides 
into two branches which cross almost at right angles. One 
branch turns to the southeast, while the other, which again 
divides into secondary branches, turns to the southwest. 
Westward rises a mountain which recalls upon a gigantic 
scale the outline of the great step-pyramid of Sakkara. 
The Egyptian engineers of the time observed that this hol- 
low was separated from the ravine of Amenhotep III. by a 
mere barrier some 500 cubits in thickness. In this there 
was nothing to dismay such practiced miners. They there- 
fore cut a trench some fifty or sixty cubits deep through 
the solid rock, at the end of which a narrow passage opens 
like a gateway into the hidden valley beyond. Was it in 
the time of Horemheb, or during the reign of Rameses I., 
that this gigantic work was accomplished ? Rameses I. is, 
at all events, the earliest king whose tomb has as yet been 
found in this spot. His son, Seti I., then his grandson, 
Rameses II., came hither to rest beside him. The Rames- 
side Pharaohs followed one after the other. Herhor may 
perhaps have been the last of the series. These crowded 



152 EGYPT 

catacombs caused the place to be called " The Valley of 
the Tombs of the Kings," — a name which it retains to this 
day. 

These tombs are not complete Each had its chapel ; 
but those chapels stood far away in the plain, at Gurneh, 
at the Ramesseum, at Medinet Habu. The Theban rock, 
like the Memphite pyramid, contained only the passages 
and the sepulchral chamber. During the daytime the pure 
Soul was in no serious danger ; but in the evening, when 
the eternal waters which flow along the vaulted heavens 
fall in cascades adown the west and are engulfed in the 
bowels of the earth, the Soul follows the bark of the Sun, 
and its escort of luminary gods into a lower world bristling 
with ambuscades and perils. For twelve hours, the divine 
squadron defiles through long and gloomy corridors, where 
numerous genii, some hostile, some friendly, now struggle 
to bar the way, and now aid in it In surmounting the diffi- 
culties of the journey. Great doors, each guarded by a 
gigantic serpent, were stationed at intervals, and led to an 
immense hall full of flame and fire, peopled by hideous 
monsters and executioners whose office it was to torture the 
damned. Then came more dark and narrow passages, 
more blind gropings in the gloom, more strife with malevo- 
lent genii, and again the joyful welcoming of the propitious 
gods. At midnight began the upward journey towards the 
eastern regions of the world; and in the morning, having 
reached the confines of the Land of Darkness, the sun 
emerged from the east to light another day. The tombs of 



TOMBS 153 

the kings were constructed upon the model of the world of 
night. They had their passages, their doors, their vaulted 
halls, which plunged down into the depths of the moun- 
tain. Nothing, however, could be more simple than the 
ordinary distribution of the parts. A square door, very 
sparingly ornamented, opened upon a passage leading to a 
chamber of more or less extent. From the further end of 
this chamber opened a second passage leading to a second 
chamber and thence sometimes to more chambers, the last 
of which contained the sarcophagus. 

When the burial was over, the entrance was filled up 
with blocks of rock, and the natural slope of the mountain- 
side was restored as skillfully as might be. 

The most complete type of this class of catacomb is that 
left to us by Seti I. ; figures and hieroglyphs alike are mod- 
els of pure design and elegant construction. The tomb of 
Rameses III. already points to decadence. It is for the 
most part roughly painted. Yellow is freely laid on, and 
the raw tones of the reds and blues are suggestive of the 
early daubs of our childhood. Mediocrity ere long reigned 
supreme, the outlines becoming more feeble, the colour more 
and more glaring till the latest tombs are but caricatures of 
those of Seti I. and Rameses III. The decoration is al- 
ways the same and Is based on the same principles as the 
decoration of the pyramids. At Thebes, as at Memphis, 
the intention was to secure to the Double the free enjoy- 
ment of his new abode, and to usher the Soul into the com- 
pany of the gods of the solar cycle and the Osirian cycle as 



154 EGYPT 

well as to guide it through the labyrinth of the infernal 
regions. 

Thus, lying in his sarcophagus, the dead man found his 
future destinies depicted thereon, and learned to understand 
the blessedness of the gods. The tombs of private persons 
were not often so elaborately decorated. Two tombs of 
the period of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty — that of Petame- 
noph at Thebes and that of Bakenrenf at Memphis — com- 
pete in this respect, however, with the royal catacombs. 
Their walls are not only sculptured with the text (more or 
less complete) of 7'he Book of the Dead^ but also with long 
extracts from The Book of the Opening of the Mouth and the 
religious formulae found in the pyramids. 

As every part of the tomb had its special decoration, so 

» 
also it had its special furniture. Of the chapel furniture 

few traces have been preserved. The table of offerings, 
which was of stone, is generally all that remains. The ob- 
jects placed in the serdab^ in the passages, and in the sepul- 
chral chamber, have suffered less from the ravages of time 
and the hand of man. During the Ancient Empire, the 
funerary portrait statues were always immured in the serdah. 
Under the Theban Dynasties the household goods of the 
dead were richer and more numerous. The Ka statues of 
his servants and family, which in former times were placed 
in the serdah with those of the master, were now consigned 
to the vault, and made on a smaller scale. As for the 
mummy if continued, as time went on, to be more and 
more enwrapped in cartonnage^ and more liberally provided 



TOMBS 155 

with papyri and amulets ; each amulet forming an essential 
part of its magic armour; and serving to protect its limbs 
and soul from destruction. 

Theoretically, every Egyptian was entitled to an eternal 
dwelling constructed after the plan which I have here de- 
scribed with its successive modifications; but the poorer 
folk were fain to do without those things which were the 
necessities of the wealthier dead. They were buried 
wherever it was cheapest — in old tombs which had been 
ransacked and abandoned ; in the natural clefts of the rock ; 
or in common pits. 



THE PYRAMIDS 

W. J. LOFTIE 



1 



"^HE word Pyramid has been a matter of consider- 
able questioning among antiquaries. A great 
authority derives it from the ancient Egyptian 
form Abumer^ a great tomb, of which the Greeks transposed 
the syllables, just as they turned Hor-em-Khoo, the title of 
the Sphinx, into Armachis, and Sestura into Sesostris. 
This is more plausible ; but the name has also been derived 
from Pi-Rama^ the mountain, and, as if to give Mr. Smyth 
the shadow of an excuse, from puros, wheat and metron^ a 
measure. So, too, pur^ fire, and puramis^ a pointed cake, 
have been suggested, and a hieroglyphic expression has been 
read or attempted to be read, as hr — hr. We cannot, so 
far, however, say for certain whether the Egyptians of the 
ancient Empire had any general name for such buildings, 
though every king's tomb had its own title, and in the 
picture-writing a triangle represented, as determinative, all 
kinds of royal burial places, whether, like the grave of 
Oonas, they were merely square flat forms, or, like the 
southernmost monument at Dahshur were almost dome- 
shaped. Upwards of twenty of these titles are found in 
the printed list of Lieblein, the Norwegian antiquary. 
They all betray the unbounded admiration in which each 



THE PYRAMIDS 157 

king held his own last resting-place, and illustrate remark- 
ably the real nature of the Egyptian faith in a life, not be- 
yond, so much as actually in, the grave. 

This is amply proved by the following list which gives 
nearly all the names known. It was originally compiled 
by the indefatigable Lieblein, but has been increased in late 
years : 



Ka-Kami, " the black bull," Vanephes - - - - 4th King, Dynasty I. 

Cha, " the crown," Seneferoo 8th " " III. 

Chut, " the splendid," or " the lights," Shoofoo - 2d " " IV. 

Ur, " the great," Chafra 4th " " IV. 

Har, " the upper," Menkaoora 5th " " IV. 

Kebeh, "the fresh," or "the refreshing," Asseskaf 6th " " IV. 

Ab-setoo, " the most pure place," Ooskaf - - - 1st " " V. 

Cha-ba, " the rising of the soul," Sahoora - - - 2d " " V. 

Ba, " the soul," Neferarkara 3d " " V. 

Men-setoo, " the most enduring place," Raenuser, 4th " " V. 

Neter-setoo, " the most holy place," Menkaoohor, 5th " " V. 

Nefer, " the lovely," Tatkara 6th " « V- 

Nefer-setoo, " the loveliest place," Oonas - - - yth " " V. 

Tat-setoo, " the most abiding place," Teta - • - ist " " VI. 

Baioo, " the souls," Ati 2d " " VI. 

Mennefer, " the fair place," Papi ------ 3d " « VI. 

Cha-nefer, " the good rising," Merienra - - - - 4th " " VI. 

Men-anch, " the place of life," Neferkara - - - 5th " " VI. 

Choo-setoo, " the most splendid place," Mentuhotep II,, " XI. 

Cherp, " the homage," Amenoo ------ « XI. 

Ka-nefer, " the great and lovely," Amenemhat I - ist " " XII. 

Cha, " the crown," Usertasen I. 2d " " XII. 



The following have been identified : The Pyramid of 
Seneferoo at Meidoun, those of Shoofoo, Chafra, Men- 
kaoora and Hentsen, a daughter of Shoofoo, at Gizeh j 



158 EGYPT 

those of Sahoora and Raenuser at Abusir j and the Masta- 
bat-el-Faroon of Oonas ; but it is known that the Pyra- 
mids of Vanephes and Menkaoohor were at Sakkara, 
while those of Usertasen, the founders of the Labyrinth, 
must be identified with the two Pyramids of lUahoon 
and Hawara. 

Pyramids, or the remains of them, exist at or near a 
large number of villages which must nearly all be on some 
part of the site, or in the immediate suburbs, of Mennefer. 
The most northern are those of Aboo Roash, where one 
may be clearly made out. At Kafr are the so-called 
Pyramids of Gizeh, nine in number, possibly ten. At 
Zowyet there is one : at Rigga a mere heap ; at Abusir, 
four, and some nearly obliterated remains ; at Sakkara, 
nine clearly distinguishable. There are five at Dahshur, 
of which two are larger than the third Pyramid at Gizeh. 
There are two shapeless heaps, probably once Pyramids, at 
Lisht, and the brick Pyramids on the site of the Labyrinth 
are one at Illahoon, one at Hawara, and two at Biahmoo. 
Besides these there is the Mastabat-el-Faroon between Sak- 
kara and Dahshur, and the three-staged tomb of Seneferoo 
at Meidoun. 

The following are the heights in feet of the princi- 
pal Pyramids: Gizeh, Shoofoo, 460 ; Chafra, 447; 
Menkaoora, 203; Sakkara, Pyramid in steps, 190 ; 
Dahshur, 326 and 321 ; and Meidoun, 122, above the 
mound which surrounds its base. The original heights 
have been estimated as follows: Shoofoo, 482 feet; 



THE PYRAMIDS 159 

Chafra, 4545 Dahshur, 342 and 335; Menkaoora, 218 j 
Sakkara, 200 ; and the now ruined Pyramid of Abusir, 
228. 

To resume : Seneferoo, it will be seen, called his Pyramid 
" the Crown " ; that of Asseskef is " Refreshment " j that 
of Papi, the " Lovely Place," a name identical with the 
name of Memphis itself. Teta, perhaps playing on his 
own name, called his Pyramid Tatsetoo^ " the Most Abiding 
of Places." Others are the " Rising of the Soul," the 
" Most Holy Place," the " Good Rising," the " Beautiful," 
the " Great and Fair," the " Pure Place," the " Place of 
Rest"; while the monument, already mentioned, of 
Oonas, which the Arabs call Mastabat-el-Faroon, is 
described as the " Best Place " ; and the unidentified tomb 
of Neferkara as the "Abode of Life." Such are the 
evidences among others that to the men of that remote 
time — a time variously estimated as seven, six and five 
thousand years ago — death was not looked upon with the 
horror which in later ages invested the grave with ideas of 
gloom, and recorded rather the despair of mourners than 
the rest of the departed. 

Near each Pyramid was the temple consecrated to the 
worship, or at least the honour, of the sleeping divinity of 
the Pharaoh. The foundations are still visible of such 
temples near the Pyramids of Chafra, Menkaoora and 
Raenuser. Even in the days of the Ptolemies the endow- 
ments which some of the oldest kings had conferred upon 
the priests of their shrines continued to enrich officials who, 



i6o EGYPT 

after the lapse of some four thousand years, perhaps, enjoyed 
sinecures. 

No writing or sculpture remains on any Pyramid. 
Herodotus tells us of the hieroglyphs on the Pyramid of 
Shoofoo. He curiously observes that they give the sum 
expended in supplying the workmen with onions and 
garlic; a statement on which I have ventured to hazard 
the conjecture, more than probable in itself, that the king's 
titles as lord of Upper and Lower Egypt were engraved 
with the lotus, the papyrus, and the bulbous plant, which 
in other places enter so largely into similar inscriptions. 

Historically speaking, the Pyramids, apart from their 
antiquity, are of the highest interest. They represent a 
time of profound peace. They point to the existence of a 
dominant race and of a population which could be called 
on for unlimited labour. They tell us little of the finer 
arts, in sculpture and painting, which even then flourished, 
but much of skill in engineering, quarrying, building, as 
distinguished from architecture, and all that could be done 
by mere multitudes working together and bringing brute 
force to bear on stubborn materials. Whatever of higher 
art those early kings lavished on their " fair resting-places," 
whatever of portraiture and painting, of gold and jewels, 
of carving and ornament, of epitaphs and funeral odes they 
could command, were bestowed on the temple ; the tomb 
itself was vast, solid, enduring, nor is it at all certain that 
the actual burial-place of Shoofoo or Chafra has been 
reached and rifled. Those who have spent most time in 



THE PYRAMIDS i6i 

searching through the labyrinths of the interior are of 
opinion that the two great Pyramids are still but half ex- 
plored. It may be that these old kings still 

" Lie in glory — 
Cased in cedar and shut in a sacred gloom ; 
Swathed in linen and precious unguents old ; 
Painted with cinnabar, and rich with gold. 
Silent they rest, in solemn salvatory ; 
Sealed from the moth and the owl and the Hitter-mouse — 
Each with his name on his brow." 

The coffin of Menkaoora is in the British Museum, and 
his name is on it, but there are doubts and difficulties with 
regard to the Third Pyramid, on which I have no intention 
of touching here. There is a possibility, at least, that it is 
not the coffin of Mycerinus, but that of another king — 
perhaps not a king, but a queen, 

" The Rhodope, who built the Pyramid," 

who knows ? And perhaps Menkaoora is yet sleeping 
quiet " in his own house." 

In the aftertime when the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty 
fought against the northern strangers, when Aahmes led 
his people against the Shepherds, when Seti I. subdued the 
Hittites and his grandson pursued Israel, when fortresses 
and treasure cities, Pi-Tum and Rameses, had to be built 
on the border, we no longer hear of such great cairns as 
the Pyramids. The Tombs in the Valley of the Kings at 



i62 EGYPT 

Thebes, great as they are, required rather skilled labour 
than mere force. No vast multitude was needed to 
decorate them in beaten gold and glorious red. The 
peaceful artist and his staff worked quietly in the dark 
corridors, while the people whose ancestors had heaped up 
the tombs of the older Pharaohs, now followed the later 
Pharaohs to the battle-field. 



THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH 

AMELIA B. EDWARDS 



I 



"^HE first glimpse that most travellers now get of 
the Pyramids is from the window of the railway 
carriage as they come from Alexandria; and it 
is not impressive. It does not take one's breath away, for 
instance, like a first sight of the Alps from the high level 
of the Neufchatel line, or the outline of the Acropolis at 
Athens as one first recognizes it from the sea. The well- 
known triangular forms look small and shadowy, and are 
too familiar to be in any way startling. And the same, I 
think, is true of every distant view of them — that is of 
every view which is too distant to afford the means of 
scaling them against other objects. It is only in approach- 
ing them, and observing how they grow with every foot of 
the road, that one begins to feel that they are not so 
familiar after all. 

But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and 
the long sand-slope climbed and the rocky platform gained, 
and the Great Pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and 
majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as 
sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and 
the horizon. It shuts out all the other Pyramids. It 
shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder. 



164 EGYPT 

We all know, and have known from childhood that it 
was stripped of its outer blocks some five hundred years 
ago to build Arab mosques and palaces j but the rugged, 
rock-like aspect of that giant staircase takes us by surprise, 
nevertheless. Nor does it look like a partial ruin, either. 
It looks as if it had been left unfinished, and as if the 
workmen might be coming back to-morrow morning. 

The colour again is a surprise. Few persons can be 
aware beforehand of the rich tawny hue that Egyptian 
limestone assumes after ages of exposure to the blaze of an 
Egyptian sky. Seen in certain lights the Pyramids look 
like piles of massy gold. 

We wished to give our whole attention and all the short 
time at our disposal to the Great Pyramid only. To gain 
some impression of the outer aspect and size of this 
enormous structure, — to steady our minds to something 
like an understanding of its age, — was enough, and more 
than enough for so brief a visit. 

For it is no easy task to realize, however imperfectly, 
the duration of six or seven thousand years ; and the Great 
Pyramid, which is supposed to have been some four thou- 
sand two hundred and odd years old at the time of the birth 
of Christ, is now in its seventh millenary. 

More impressive by far than the weightiest array of 
figures or the most striking comparisons, was the shadow 
cast by the Great Pyramid as the sun went down. That 
mighty Shadow, sharp and distinct, stretched across the 
stony platform of the desert and over full three-quarters of 




CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID 



THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH 165 

a mile of the green plain below. It divided the sunlight 
where it fell just as its great original divided the sunlight in 
the upper air; and it darkened the space it covered like an 
eclipse. It was not without a thrill of something ap- 
proaching to awe that one remembered how this selfsame 
Shadow had gone on registering, not only the height of the 
most stupendous gnomon ever set up by human hands, but 
the slow passage, day by day, of more than sixty centuries 
of the world's history. 

The space on the top of the Great Pyramid * is said to 
be thirty feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level 



1 There are three — the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the second Pyramid 
of Khephren, and the third, far smaller, of Mycerinus or Menkauru 
(also Menkara and Menkaoora). They are all attributed to the Fourth 
Dynasty. 

The height of the Great Pyramid is 451 feet (formerly 482), its sides 
are 750 feet long at the base (formerly 768), and it covers an area of 
about thirteen acres. The second Pyramid is 447 feet high, and the third 
only 203 feet. 

The Pyramids seem to have been commenced with a nucleus of rock 
around which were built huge stone steps which were finally filled in 
with smooth polished stones. The outer casing has been wholly removed 
at various periods, and only a fragment of it remains on the second 
Pyramid. The smooth surface was covered with sculptures and inscrip- 
tions. 

The Great Pyramid was opened by Caliph El-Mamoun in A. D. 820 on 
the chance of finding treasure, but the entrance his men made is now 
blocked up. The present entrance is about forty feet from the base. A 
great vaulted gallery leads down to the subterranean chamber, ninety feet 
below the base and 347 feet from the entrance ; it is eleven feet high and 
measures forty-six by twenty-seven feet. Mariette claimed that this was a 
false chamber, intended to divert the attention of any one entering from 
the real tomb. An upward passage leads towards the centre, and is the 
approach to the " Queen's Chamber " (eighteen feet by seventeen and 



i66 EGYPT 

platform. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two 
or three of the tier next above that; so making pleasant 
seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reach- 
ing the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of 
the Second Pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like 
a mountain ; yet so close that I fancied I could almost 
touch it by putting out my hand. Every detail of the sur- 
face, every crack and parti-coloured stain in the shining 
stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible. 
The view from this place is immense. The country is 
so flat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, 
that one really sees more and sees farther than from many 
a mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The 
ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and the 
great Necropolis is seen as a ground plan. The effect 



twenty feet high). Mariette considers that here also the passage to the 
great gallery was closed, so that those who reached this point might sup- 
pose they had seen all the Pyramid held. The great gallery is 151 feet 
long, seven feet wide, and twenty-eight feet high ; it leads to the King's 
Chamber (thirty-four feet by seventeen and nineteen feet high), in which 
are the remains of a red granite sarcophagus. 

There is much argument about these Pyramids: some even consider 
that they had some strange metrical and dimensional object. But how- 
ever their dimensions may have been devised, the consensus of opinion 
is that they are tombs : for that matter the Pyramid may be a monument 
to the king's learning as well as a resting place for his body. 

The smallest Pyramid, that of Mycerinus, is said, in one legend, to have 
been built by one of the princesses on doubtfully acquired resources ; an- 
other myth assigns it to Rhodopis, but Mycerinus was the real builder. 
He it is to whom it was revealed by the gods that he had but six years to 
live, but it is said that he doubled the period by turning day into night. — 
Egypt and How to See It ( 1910). 



THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH 167 

must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape 
seen from a balloon. Without ascending the Pyramid, it 
is certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way 
in which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from 
this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its 
quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small 
pyramids, others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive 
slabs, like the roofing-stones of the Temples. We see 
how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his 
mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around 
him. We see the great causeways which moved Herodotus 
to such wonder, and along which the giant stones were 
brought. Recognizing how clearly the place is a great 
cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn 
the Pyramids into astronomical observatories and abstruse 
standards of measurement. They are the grandest graves 
in all the world — and they are nothing more. 

A little way to the southward, from the midst of a sandy 
hollow, rises the head of the Sphinx. Older than the 
Pyramids, older than history, the monster lies couchant 
like a watch-dog, looking ever to the east, as if for some 
dawn that has not yet risen.' A depression in the sand close 

' A long disputed question as to the meaning of the Sphinx has of 
late been finally solved. The Sphinx, as shown by M. J. de Rouge, ac- 
cording to an inscription at Edfou to represent a transformation of Horus, 
who in order to vanquish Set (Typhon) took the shape of a human- 
headed lion. It was under this form that Horus was adored in the Nome 
Leontopolites. In the above-mentioned Stela of Boulac, known as the 
stone of Cheops, the Great Sphinx is especially designated as the Sphinx 
of Hor-em-Khou, or Horus-on-the-Horizon. This is evidently in refer- 



168 EGYPT 

by marks the site of that strange monument miscalled 
the Temple of the Sphinx. Farther away to the west on 
the highest slope of this part of the desert platform, stands 
the Pyramid of Menkara (Mycerinus). It has lost but five 
feet of its original height, and from this distance it looks 
quite perfect. 

Such — set in a waste of desert — are the main objects, 
and the nearest objects, on which our eyes first rest. As a 
whole, the view is more long than wide, being bounded to 
the westward by the Libyan range, and to the eastward by 
the Mokattam hills. At the foot of those yellow hills, 
divided from us by the cultivated plain across which we 
have just driven, lies Cairo, all glittering domes half seen 
through a sunlit haze. Overlooking the fairy city stands 
the Mosque of the Citadel, its mast-like minarets piercing 
the clearer atmosphere. Far to the northward, traversing 
reach after reach of shadowy palm-groves, the eye loses 
itself in the dim and fertile distances of the Delta. To the 
west and south, all is desert. It begins here at our feet — 
a rolling wilderness of valleys and slopes and rivers and 
seas of sand, broken here and there by abrupt ridges of 
rock, and mounds of ruined masonry and open graves. A 

ence to the orientation of the figure. It has often been asked why the 
Sphinx is turned to the east. I presume the answer would be, Because 
Horus, avenger of Osiris, looks to the east, awaiting the return of his 
father from the lower world. As Horus was supposed to have reigned 
over Egypt, every Pharaoh took the title of Living Horus, Golden Hawk^ 
etc., etc. Hence the features of the reigning King were always given to 
the Sphinx form when architecturally employed as at Karnak, Wady 
Sabooah, Tanis, etc., etc. 



THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH 169 

silver line skirts the edge of this dead world, and vanishes 
southward in the sun-mist that shimmers on the farthest 
horizon. To the left of that silver line we see the quarried 
cliffs of Turra, marble-white ; opposite Turra, the plumy- 
palms of Memphis. On the desert platform above, clear 
though faint, the Pyramids of Abusir and Sakkara and 
Dahshur. Every stage of the Pyramid of Ouenephes, 
banded in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome- 
like summit of the great Pyramid of Dahshur. Even the 
brick ruin beside it which we took for a black rock as we 
went up the river, and which looks like a black rock still, 
is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and 
sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an 
unfinished tower of Babel, the Pyramid of Meidoun. It 
is in this direction that our eyes turn oftenest — to the 
measureless desert in its mystery of light and silence ; to 
the Nile where it gleams out again and again, till it melts 
at last into that faint far distance beyond which lie Thebes 
and Philas and Abou Simbel. 




TEMPLES 

G. MJSPERO 

OST of the famous sanctuaries — Dendera, 
Edfou, Abydos — were founded before Mena by 
the Servants of Horus. Becoming dilapidated or 
ruined in the course of ages, they have been restored, re- 
built, remodelled, one after the other, till nothing remains 
of the primitive design to show us what the first Egyptian 
architecture was like. The funerary temples built by the 
kings of the Fourth Dynasty have left some traces. That 
of the second pyramid of Gizeh was so far preserved at the 
beginning of the Nineteenth Century that Maillet saw four 
large pillars standing. It is now almost entirely destroyed ; 
but this loss has been more than compensated by the dis- 
covery, in 1853, °^ ^ temple situate about fifty yards to the 
southward of the Sphinx. The facade is still hidden by the 
sand, and the inside is but partly uncovered. The core 
masonry is of fine Turah limestone. The casing, pillars, 
architraves and roof were constructed with immense blocks 
of alabaster of red granite. 

Without any main door, without windows and entered 
through a passage too long to admit the light of day, the 
building could only have received light and air through 
slanting air-slits in the roofing, of which traces are yet vis- 







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Q 

o" 
u 

H 
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O 
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TEMPLES 171 

ible on the tops of the walls on each side of the main hall. 
Inscriptions, bas-reliefs, paintings, such as we are accus- 
tomed to find everywhere in Egypt, are all wanting ; and 
yet these bare walls produce as great an impression upon 
the spectator as the most richly decorated temples of 
Thebes. Not only grandeur but sublimity has been 
achieved in the mere juxtaposition of blocks of granite and 
alabaster, by means of purity of line and exactness of pro- 
portion. 

Some few scattered ruins in Nubia, the Fayoum and Sinai, 
do not suffice to prove whether the temples af the Twelfth 
Dynasty merited the praises lavished on them in contem- 
porary inscriptions or not. Those of the Theban Kings, 
of the Ptolemies, and of the Caesars which are yet standing 
are in some cases nearly perfect, while almost all are easy 
of restoration to those who conscientiously study them 
upon the spot. At first sight, they seem to present an in- 
finite variety of arrangement ; but on a closer view they are 
found to conform to a single type. We will begin with 
the sanctuary. This is a low, small, obscure, rectangular 
chamber, inaccessible to all save Pharaoh and the priests. 
As a rule, it contained neither statue nor emblem, but only 
the sacred bark, or a tabernacle of painted wood placed upon 
a pedestal. A niche in the wall, or an isolated shrine 
formed of a single block of stone, received on certain days 
the statue, or inanimate symbol of the local god or the liv- 
ing animal, or the image of the animal sacred to the god. 
A temple must necessarily contain this one chamber j and 



172 EGYPT 

if it contained but this one chamber, it would be no less a 
temple than the most complex buildings. Around the 
sanctuary, or " divine house," was grouped a series of 
chambers in which sacrificial and ceremonial objects were 
stored, as flowers, perfumes, stuffs and precious vessels. In 
advance of this block of buildings were next built one or 
more halls supported on columns ; and in advance of these 
came a courtyard, where the priests and devotees assem- 
bled. This courtyard was surrounded by a colonnade to 
which the public had access, and was entered through a 
gateway flanked by two towers, in front of which were 
placed statues or obelisks ; the whole being surrounded by 
an inclosure wall of brickwork, and approached through an 
avenue of sphinxes. Every Pharaoh was free to erect a 
hall still more sumptuous in front of those which his prede- 
cessors had built ; and what he did, others might do after 
him. Thus, successive series of chambers and courts, of 
pylons and porticoes, were added reign after reign to the 
original nucleus ; and — vanity or piety prompting the work 
—the temple continued to increase in every direction, till 
space or means had failed. 

The temple which the Pharaohs of the Twentieth Dynast)^ 
erected to the south of Karnak, in honour of the God 
Khonsu, one is tempted to accept as the type of an Egyptian 
temple, in preference to others more elegant or majestic. 
On analysis it resolves itself into two parts, separated by a 
thick wall. In the centre of the lesser division is the Holy of 
Holies, open at both ends and isolated from the rest of the 



TEMPLES 173 

building by a surrounding passage ten feet in width. To 
the right and left of this sanctuary are small dark chambers 
and behind it is a hall of four columns, from which open 
seven other chambers. Such was the house of the god, 
having no communication with the adjoining parts, except 
by two doors in the southern wall. These opened into a 
wide and shallow hypostyle hall divided into nave and aisles. 
The nave is supported by four lotus-flower columns, twenty- 
three feet in height ; the aisles each contain two lotus-bud 
columns, eighteen feet high. The roof of the nave is, 
therefore, five feet higher than that of the sides. This ele- 
vation was made use of for lighting purposes, the clerestory 
being fitted with stone gratings, which admitted the day- 
light. The court was square and surrounded by a double 
colonnade entered by way of four side-gates and a great 
central gateway flanked by two quadrangular towers with 
sloping fronts. This pylon measures one hundred and five 
feet in length, thirty-three feet in width and sixty feet in 
height. It contains no chambers, but only a narrow stair- 
case, which leads to the top of the gate, and thence up to 
the towers. Four long grooves in the facade, reaching to 
a third of its height, correspond to four quadrangular open- 
ings cut through the whole thickness of the masonry. 
Here were fixed four great wooden masts, formed of joined 
beams and held in place by a wooden framework fixed in 
the four openings above mentioned. From these masts 
floated long streamers of various colours. Such was the 
temple of Khonsu, and such, in their main features, were 



174 EGYPT 

the majority of the greater temples of Theban and Ptole- 
maic times, as Luxor, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Habu, 
Edfou and Dendera. Though for the most part half in 
ruins, they aiFect one with a strange and disquieting sense 
of oppression. As mystery was a favourite attribute of the 
Egyptian gods, even so the plan of their temples is in such 
wise devised as to lead gradually from the full sunshine of 
the outer world to the obscurity of their retreats. At the 
entrance we find large open spaces where air and light 
stream freely in. The hypostyle hall is pervaded by a sober 
twilight ; the sanctuary is more than half lost in a vague 
darkness j and at the end of the building, in the farthest of 
the chambers, night all but reigns completely. The effect 
of distance, which was produced by this gradual diminution 
of light, was still further heightened by various structural 
artifices. The parts, for instance, are not on the same 
level. The ground rises from the entrance, and there are 
always a few steps to mount in passing from one part to 
another. 

If enlargement was needed, the sanctuary and surrounding 
chambers were generally left untouched, and only the cere- 
monial parts of the building, as the hypostyle halls, the 
courts, or pylons, were attacked. The procedure of the 
Egyptians under these circumstances is best illustrated by 
the history of the great temple of Karnak. Founded 
by Usertesen I., probably on the site of a still earlier temple, 
it was but a small building, constructed of limestone and 
sandstone, with granite doorways. The inside was deco- 



TEMPLES 175 

rated with sixteen-sided pillars. The second and third 
Amenemhats added some work to it, and the princes of the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties adorned it with statues 
and tables of offerings. It was still unaltered when, in the 
Eighteenth Century b. c, Thothmes I., enriched with booty 
of war, resolved to enlarge it. In advance of what already 
stood there, he erected two chambers, preceded by a court 
and flanked by two isolated chapels. In advance of these 
again he erected three successive pylons, one behind the 
other. The whole presented the appearance of a vast rec- 
tangle placed crosswise at the end of another rectangle. 
Thothmes II. and Hatshepsut covered the walls erected by 
their father with bas-relief sculptures, but added no more 
buildings. Hatshepsut, however, in order to bring in her 
obelisks between the pylons of Thothmes I., opened a breach 
in the south wall, and overthrew sixteen of the columns 
which stood in that spot. Thothmes III., probably finding 
certain parts of the structure unworthy of the god, rebuilt 
the first pylon, and also the double sanctuary, which he 
renewed in the red granite of Syene. To the eastward he 
rebuilt some old chambers, the most important among them 
being the processional hall, used for the starting-point 
and halting-place of ceremonial processions, and these he 
surrounded with a stone wall. He also made the lake 
whereon the sacred boats were launched on festival days ; 
and, with a sharp change of axis, he built two pylons facing 
towards the south, thus violating the true relative proportion 
which had till then subsisted between the body and the front 



176 EGYPT 

of the general mass of the building. The outer enclosure 
was now too large for the earlier pylons, and did not properly 
accord with the later ones. Amenhotep III. corrected this 
defect. He erected a sixth and yet more massive pylon, 
which was, therefore, better suited for the facade. As it 
now stood, the temple surpassed even the boldest architec- 
tural enterprises hitherto attempted ; but the Pharaohs of 
the Nineteenth Dynasty succeeded in achieving still more. 
They added only a hypostyle hall and a pylon ; but the 
hypostyle hall measured 170 feet in length by 329 in 
breadth. Down the centre they carried a main avenue of 
twelve columns, with lotus-flower capitals, being the loftiest 
ever erected in the interior of a building ; while in the 
aisles, ranged in seven rows on either side, they planted 122 
columns with lotus-bud capitals. The roof of the great 
nave rose to a height of seventy-five feet above the level of 
the ground, and the pylon stood some fifty feet higher still. 
During a whole century, three kings laboured to perfect this 
hypostyle hall. Rameses I. conceived the idea ; Seti I. 
finished the bulk of the work; and Rameses II. wrought 
nearly the whole of the decoration. The Pharaohs of the 
next following dynasties vied with each other for such 
blank spaces as might be found wherein to engrave their 
names upon the columns, and so to share the glory of the 
three founders; but farther they did not venture. Left 
thus, however, the monument was still incomplete. It still 
needed one last pylon and a colonnaded court. Nearly 
three centuries elapsed before the task was again taken 



TEMPLES 177 

in hand. At last the Bubastite kings decided to begin the 
colonnades, but their work was as feeble as their resources 
were limited. Taharkah, the Ethiopian, imagined for a 
moment that he was capable of rivalling the great Theban 
Pharaohs, and planned a hypostyle hall even larger than the 
first ; but he made a false start. The columns of the great 
nave, which were all that he had time to erect, were placed 
too wide apart to admit of being roofed over ; so they never 
supported anything, but remained as memorials of his 
failure. Finally, the Ptolemies, faithful to the traditions of 
the native monarchy, threw themselves into the work; but 
their labours were interrupted by revolts at Thebes, and the 
earthquake of the year 27 b. c. destroyed part of the 
temple, so that the pylon remained forever unfinished. The 
history of Karnak is identical with that of all the great 
Egyptian temples. When closely studied, the reason why 
they are for the most part so irregular becomes evident. The 
general plan is practically the same, and the progress of the 
building was carried forward in the same way ; but the archi- 
tects could not always foresee the future importance of their 
work, and the site was not always favourable to the de- 
velopment of the building. At Luxor, the progress went 
on methodically enough under Amenhotep IIL and Seti L, 
but when Rameses IL desired to add to the work of his 
predecessors, a bend in the river compelled him to turn east- 
wards. His pylon is not parallel to that of Amenhotep IIL, 
and his colonnades make a distinct angle with the general 
axis of the earlier work. At Philae the deviation is still 



1 78 EGYPT 

greater. Such difficulties were, in fact, a frequent source 
of inspiration ; and Philas shows with what skill the 
Egyptians extracted every element of beauty and picturesque- 
ness from enforced disorder. 

The idea of the rock-cut temple must have occurred 
to the Egyptians at an early period. They carved the 
houses of the dead in the mountainside ; why, therefore, 
should they not in like manner carve the houses of the 
gods ? Yet the earliest known Speos-sanctuaries date from 
only the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. They are 
generally found in those parts of the valley where the 
cultivable land is narrowest, as near Beni-Hassan, at Gebel 
Silsileh, and in Nubia. All varieties of the constructed 
temple are found in the rock-cut temple, though more or 
less modified by local conditions. At Abou Simbel 
(Ibsambul), the two temples are excavated entirely in the 
cliff. The front of the great Speos imitates a sloping pylon 
crowned with a cornice, and guarded as usual by four 
seated colossi flanked by smaller statues. These colossi 
are sixty-six feet high. The doorway passed, there comes 
a first hall measuring one hundred and thirty feet in length 
by sixty feet in width, which corresponds to the usual 
peristyle. Eight Osiride statues backed by as many 
square pillars seem to bear the mountain on their heads. 
Beyond this come a (i) hypostyle hall; (2) a transverse 
gallery, isolating the sanctuary, and (3) the sanctuary itself 
between two smaller chambers. Eight crypts, sunk at a 
somewhat lower level than that of the main excavation, 



TEMPLES 179 

are unequally distributed to the right and left of the peri- 
style. The whole excavation measures one hundred and 
eighty feet from the doorway to the end of the sanctuary. 
The small Specs of Hathor, about a hundred paces to the 
northward, is of smaller dimensions. The facade is 
adorned with six standing colossi, four representing 
Rameses II., and two his wife Nefertari. 

The most celebrated and original hemi-speos is that 
built by Queen Hatshepsut, at Deir-el-Bahari, in the 
Theban necropolis. The sanctuary and chapels which, as 
usual, accompany it, were cut about one hundred feet above 
the level of the valley. In order to arrive at that height, 
slopes were made and terraces laid out according to a plan 
which was not understood until the site was thoroughly 
excavated. 

Between the hemi-speos and the isolated temple, the 
Egyptians created yet another variety, namely the built 
temple backed by, but not carried into the clifF. The 
Temple of the Sphinx at Gizeh and the Temple of Seti I. 
at Abydos may be cited as two good examples. 

Most temples, even the smallest, should be surrounded 
by a square enclosure or temenos. At Medinet-Habu, 
this enclosure wall is of sandstone — low, and embattled. 
The innovation is due to a whim of Rameses III., who in 
giving to his monument the outward appearance of a 
fortress, sought to commemorate his Syrian victories. As 
at Karnak, avenues of sphinxes and series of pylons led up 
to the various gates and formed triumphal approaches. 



i8o EGYPT 

The rest of the ground was in part occupied by stables, 
cellarage, granaries and private houses. Just as in Europe 
during the Middle Ages the population crowded most 
densely round about the churches and abbeys, so in Egypt 
they swarmed around the temples, profiting by that security 
which the terror of his name and the solidity of his ram- 
parts secured to the local deity. A clear space was at first 
reserved round the pylons and the walls ; but in course of 
time the houses encroached upon this ground, and even 
were built up against the boundary wall. Destroyed and 
rebuilt century after century upon the selfsame spot, the 
debris of these surrounding dwellings so raised the level of 
the soil, that the temples ended for the most part by being 
gradually buried in a hollow formed by the artificial ele- 
vation of the surrounding city. Herodotus noticed this at 
Bubastis, and on examination it is seen to have been the 
same in many other localities. At Ombos, at Edfou, at 
Dendera, the whole city nestled inside the precincts of 
the divine dwelling. At Memphis and at Thebes, there 
were as many keeps as there were great temples, and these 
sacred fortresses, each at first standing alone in the midst 
of houses, were, from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, 
connected each with each by avenues of sphinxes. These 
were commonly andro-sphinxes, combining the head of a 
man with the body of a lion ; but we also find crio- 
sphinxes, which united a ram's head with a lion's body. 
Elsewhere, in places where the local worship admitted of 
such substitution, a couchant ram, holding a statuette of 



TEMPLES i8i 

the royal founder between his bent forelegs, takes the 
place of the conventional sphinx. The avenue leading 
from Luxor to Karnak was composed of these diverse 
elements. It was one mile and a quarter in length, and 
there were many bends in it. 

Ancient tradition affirmed that the earliest Egyptian 
temples contained neither sculptured images, inscriptions, 
nor symbols ; and, in point of fact, the Temple of the 
Sphinx is bare. But this is a unique example. The 
fragments of architraves and masonry bearing the name 
of Khafra, which were used for building material in the 
modern pyramid of Lisht, show that this primitive sim- 
plicity had already been abandoned by the time of the 
Fourth Dynasty. During the Theban period all smooth 
surfaces, all pylons, wall-faces and shafts of columns were 
covered with figure-groups and inscriptions. Under the 
Ptolemies and Caesars, figures and hieroglyphs became so 
crowded that the stones on which they are sculptured 
seem to be lost under the masses of ornament with which 
it is charged. We recognize at a glance that these scenes 
are not placed at random. They follow in sequence, are 
interlinked and form, as it were, a great mystic book in 
which the official relations between gods and men, as well 
as between men and gods, are clearly set forth for such as 
are skilled to read them. 

The temple is built in the likeness of the world, as the 
world was known to the Egyptians. The earth was a flat 
and shallow plane, longer than its width. The sky, ac- 



1 82 EGYPT 

cording to some, extended overhead like an immense iron 
ceiling, and, according to others, like a huge shallow vault. 
As it could not remain suspended in space without some 
support, they imagined it to be held in place by four im- 
mense props or pillars. The floor of the temple naturally 
represented the earth. The columns stood for these 
pillars. The roof, vaulted at Abydos, flat elsewhere, cor- 
responded exactly with the Egyptian idea of the sky. Each 
of these parts was decorated in consonance with its mean- 
ing. Those next to the ground were clothed with vegeta- 
tion. The bases of the columns were surrounded by 
leaves, and the lower parts of the walls were adorned with 
long stems of lotus or papyrus, in the midst of which 
animals were occasionally depicted. Bouquets of water- 
plants emerging from the water enlivened the bottom of the 
wall- space in certain chambers. Elsewhere, we find full- 
blown flowers interspersed with buds, or tied together with 
cords ; or those emblematic plants which symbolize the 
union of Upper and Lower Egypt under the rule of a 
single Pharaoh ; or birds with human hands and arms, 
perched in an attitude of adoration on the sign which rep- 
resents a solemn festival ; or kneeling prisoners tied to the 
stake in couples, each couple consisting of an Asiatic and 
negro. Male and female Niles, laden with flowers and 
fruits, either kneel or advance in majestic procession, along 
the ground level. These are the nomes, lakes and districts 
of Egypt, bringing offerings of their products to the god. 
In one instance, at Karnak, Thothmes III. caused the 



TEMPLES 183 

fruits, flowers and animals indigenous to the foreign lands 
which he had conquered- to be sculptured on the lower 
courses of his walls. The ceilings were painted blue and 
sprinkled with five pointed stars painted yellow, occasion- 
ally interspersed with the cartouches of the royal founder. 
The monotony of this Egyptian heaven was also relieved 
by long bands of hieroglyphic inscriptions. The vultures 
of Nekheb and Uati, the goddesses of the south and north, 
crowned and armed with divine emblems, hovered above the 
nave of the side of the lintels of the great doors, above the 
head of hypostyle halls and the king as he passed on his 
way to the sanctuary. At the Ramesseum, at Edfou, at 
Philae, at Dendera, at Ombos, at Esneh, the depths of the 
firmament seemed to open to the eyes of the faithful, re- 
vealing the dwellers therein. There the celestial ocean 
poured forth its floods navigated by the sun and moon with 
their attendant escorts of planets, constellations and decani ; 
and there also the genii of the months and days marched in 
long procession. In the Ptolemaic age, Zodiacs fashioned 
after Greek models were sculptured side by side with 
astronomical tables of purely native origin. 

These scenes illustrate the ofiicial relations which 
subsisted between Egypt and the gods. The people had no 
right of direct intercourse with the deities. They needed a 
mediator, who partaking of both human and divine nature 
was qualified to communicate with both. The king alone, 
Son of the Sun, was of sufiiciently high descent to contem- 
plate the god in his temple, to serve him, and speak with 



i84 EGYPT 

him face to face. Sacrifices could be offered only by him 
or through him, and in his name. Even the customary 
offerings to the dead were supposed to pass through his 
hands, and the family availed themselves of his name in the 
formula Suten ta hotep to forward them to the other world. 
The king is seen, therefore, in all parts of the temple, 
standing, seated, kneeling, slaying the victim, presenting 
the parts, pouring out the wine, the milk and the oil, and 
burning the incense. All humankind acts through him, 
and through him performs its duty to the gods. When 
the ceremonies to be performed required the assistance of 
many persons, then mortal subordinates (consisting, as much 
as possible, of his own family) appear by his side. 

Observing the variety of subjects treated on the walls of 
any one temple, one might at first be tempted to think that 
the decoration does not form a connected whole, and that, 
although many series of scenes must undoubtedly contain 
the development of an historic idea or a religious dogma, 
yet that others are merely strung together without any 
necessary link. At Luxor, and again at the Ramesseum, 
each face of the pylon is a battle-field on which may be 
studied almost day for day, the campaign of Rameses II. 
against the Kheta, which took place in the fifth year of his 
reign. There we see the Egyptian camp attacked by night ; 
the king's body-guard surprised during the march ; the de- 
feat of the enemy ; their flight j the garrison of Kadesh 
sallying forth to the relief of the vanquished ; and the 
disasters which befell the prince of the Kheta and his gen- 



TEMPLES 185 

erals. Elsewhere it is not the war which is represented, 
but the human sacrifices which anciently celebrated the 
close of each campaign. The king is seen in the act of 
seizing his prostrate prisoners by the hair of their heads, and 
uplifting his mace as if about to shatter their heads at a 
single blow. At Karnak, along the whole length of the 
outer wall, Seti I. pursues the Bedawin of Sinai. At 
Medinet-Habu Rameses III. destroys the fleet of the peo- 
ples of the great sea, or receives the cut-off hands of the 
Libyans, which his soldiers bring to him as trophies. In 
the next scene, all is peace ; and we behold Pharaoh pour- 
ing out a libation of perfumed water to his father Amen. 
It would seem as if no link could be established between 
these subjects, and yet the one is the necessary consequence 
of the others. If the god had not granted victory to the 
king, the king in his turn would not have performed these 
ceremonies in the temple. The sculptor has recorded the 
events in their order, — first the victory, then the sacrifice. 
The favour of the god precedes the thank-offering of the 
king. Thus, on closer examination, we find this multitude 
of episodes forming the several links of one continuous 
chain, while every scene, including such as seem at first 
sight to be wholly unexplained, represents one stage in the 
development of a single action, which begins at the door, is 
carried through the various halls and penetrates to the 
farthest recesses of the sanctuary. 

Nor was this all. Each part of the temple had its acces- 
sory decoration and its furniture. The outer faces of the 



1 86 EGYPT 

pylons were ornamented, not only with the masts and 
streamers before mentioned, but with statues and obelisks. 
The statues, four or six in number, were of limestone, 
granite or sandstone. They invariably represented the 
royal founder, and were sometimes of prodigious size. 
The two Memnons seated at the entrance of the temple 
of Amenhotep III., at Thebes, measured about fifty feet in 
height. The colossal Rameses II. of the Ramesseum 
measured fifty-seven feet and that of Tanis at least seventy 
feet. The greater number, however, did not exceed twenty 
feet. They mounted guard before the temple, facing out- 
wards, as if confronting an approaching enemy. The obe- 
lisks of Karnak are mostly hidden amid the central courts ; 
and those of Queen Hatshepsut were imbedded for seven- 
teen feet of their height in masses of masonry which con- 
cealed their bases. These are accidental circumstances 
and easy of explanation. Each of the pylons before which 
they are stationed had in its turn been the entrance to the 
temple, and was thrown into the rear by the works of suc- 
ceeding Pharaohs. The true place of all obelisks was in 
front of the colossi, on each side of the main entrance. 
They are always in pairs, but often of unequal height. 
Some have professed to see in them the emblem of Amen, 
the Generator} or a finger of the God ; or a ray of the sun. 
In sober truth, they are a more shapely form of the stand- 
ing stone or menhir, which is raised by semi-civilized peo- 
ples in commemoration of their gods or their dead. Small 
obelisks, about three feet in height, are found in tombs as 




&4 

o 

"A 
O 

>■ 



TEMPLES 187 

early as the Fourth Dynasty. They are placed to right 
and left of the Stela ; that is to say, on either side of the 
door which leads to the dwelling of the dead. Erected be- 
fore the pylon-gates of temples, they are made of granite, 
and their dimensions are considerable. The obelisk of 
Heliopolis measures sixty-eight feet in the shaft, and the 
obelisks of Luxor stand seventy-seven and seventy-five and 
a half feet high respectively. The loftiest known is the 
obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut at Karnak, which rises to a 
height of 109 feet. To convey such masses and to place 
them in equilibrium was a sufficiently difficult task, and 
one is at a loss to understand how the Egyptians succeeded 
in erecting them with no other appliances than ropes and 
sacks of sand. Queen Hatshepsut boasts that her obelisks 
were quarried, shaped, transported and erected in seven 
months ; and we have no reason to doubt the truth of her 
statement. 

Such was the accessory decoration of the pylon. The 
inner courts and hypostyle hall of the temple contained 
more colossi. Some placed with their backs against the 
outer sides of pillars or walls were half engaged in the 
masonry and built up in courses. At Luxor under the 
peristyle and at Karnak between each column of the great 
nave, were also placed statues of Pharaoh ; but these were 
statues of Pharaoh the victor clad in his robes of state. 

The sanctuary and the surrounding chambers contained 
the objects used in the ceremonial of worship. The shrines 
are little chapels of wood or stone in which the spirit of the 



i88 EGYPT 

Deity was supposed to dwell, and which, on ceremonial 
occasions, contained his image. The sacred barks were 
built after the models of the Bari, or boat, in which the sun 
performed his daily course. The shrine was placed amid- 
ships of the boat and covered with a veil or curtain to con- 
ceal its contents from all spectators. We have not as yet 
discovered any of the statues employed in the ceremonial, 
but we know what they were like, what part they played, 
and of what materials they were made. They were ani- 
mated, and in addition to their bodies of stone, metal, or 
wood, they had each a soul magically derived from the soul 
of the divinity which they represented. They spoke, 
moved, acted — not metaphorically, but actually. The later 
Ramessides ventured upon no enterprises without consult- 
ing them. They stated their difficulties, and the god re- 
plied to each question by a movement of the head. It was 
after a conversation with the statue of Amen in the dusk 
of the sanctuary, that Queen Hatshepsut despatched her 
squadron to the shores of the Land of Incense.* Theo- 
retically, the divine soul of the image was understood to 
be the only miracle worker ; practically, its speech and 
motion were the results of a pious fraud. Interminable 
avenues of sphinxes, gigantic obelisks, massive pylons, 
halls of a hundred columns, mysterious chambers of per- 

' The country from which the Egyptians imported spices, precious 
woods, gems, etc. It is supposed to represent the southern coasts of the 
Red Sea, on either side the Bab-el-Mandeb. Queen Hatshepsfit's famous 
expedition is represented in a series of coloured bas-relief sculptures on 
the walls of her great temple at Deir-el-Bahari. 



TEMPLES 189 

petual night — in a word, the whole Egyptian temple and 
its dependencies — were built by way of a hiding-place for a 
performing puppet, of which the wires were worked by a 
priest. 



T 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 

AMELIA B. EDWARDS 

f ■ ^HE village ' being left behind, we ride on through 
one long palm grove after another ; now skirting 
the borders of a large sheet of tranquil back-water; 
now catching a glimpse of the far-ofF pyramids of Gizeh, 
now passing between the huge irregular mounds of crum- 
bled clay which mark the site of Memphis. Next beyond 
these we come out upon a high embanked road some twenty 
feet above the plain, which here spreads out like a wide 
lake and spends its last dark-brown alluvial wave against 
the yellow rocks which define the edge of the desert. 
High on this barren plateau, seen for the first time in one 
unbroken panoramic line, there stands a solemn company 
of pyramids ; those of Sakkara straight before us, those of 
Dahshur to the left, those of Abusir to the right, and the 
great Pyramids of Gizeh always in the remote distance. 

It might be thought there would be some monotony in 
such a scene, and but little beauty. On the contrary, 
however, there is beauty of a most subtle and exquisite 
kind — transcendent beauty of colour, and atmosphere and 
sentiment; and no monotony either in the landscape or in 
the forms of the pyramids. One of these which we are 
1 Bedreshein. 




Q 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 191 

now approaching is built in a succession of pyramids 
gradually decreasing towards the top. Another down 
yonder at Dahshur curves outward at the angles, half dome, 
half pyramid, like the roof of the Palais de Justice in Paris. 
No two are of precisely the same size, or built at precisely 
the same angle; and each cluster differs somehow in the 
grouping. 

Then again the colouring ! — colouring not to be matched 
with any pigments yet invented. The Libyan rocks, like 
rusty gold — the paler hue of the driven sand-slopes — the 
warm maize of the nearer Pyramids which, seen from a 
distance, take a tender tint of rose like the red bloom on 
an apricot — the delicate tone of these objects against the 
sky, soft and pearly towards the horizon, blue and burning 
towards the zenith — the opalescent shadows pale blue, and 
violet and greenish-gray, that nestle in the hollows of the 
rock and the curves of the sand-drifts — all this is beautiful 
in a way impossible to describe, and alas ! impossible to 
copy. Nor does the lake-like plain with its palm-groves 
and corn-flats form too tame a foreground. It is exactly 
what is wanted to relieve that glowing distance. 

It is a long and shelterless ride from the palms to the 
desert ; but we come to the end of it at last, mounting 
just such another sand-slope as that which leads up from 
the Gizeh road to the foot of the Great Pyramid. The 
edge of the plateau here rises abruptly from the plain in 
one long range of low perpendicular cliiFs pierced with dark 
mouths of rock-cut sepulchres, while the sand-slope by 



192 EGYPT 

which we are climbing pours down through a breach in 
the rock, as an Alpine snow-drift flows through a moun- 
tain gap from the ice-level above. 

Notwithstanding that I had first seen the Pyramids of 
Gizeh, the size of the Sakkara group — especially of the 
Pyramid in platforms — took me by surprise. They are all 
smaller than the Pyramids of Khufu and Khafra, and 
woul4 no doubt look sufficiently insignificant if seen with 
them in close juxtaposition ; but taken by themselves they 
are quite vast enough for grandeur. As for the pyramid 
in platforms (which is the largest at Sakkara, and the next 
largest to the Pyramid of Khafra) its position is so fine, its 
architectural style so exceptional, its age so immense, that 
one altogether loses sight of these questions of relative 
magnitude. If Egyptologists are right in ascribing the 
royal title hieroglyphed on the inner door of this pyramid 
to Ouenephes, the fourth king of the First Dynasty, then it 
is the most ancient building in the world. It had been 
standing from five to seven hundred years when King 
Khufu began his Great Pyramid at Gizeh. It was over 
two thousand years old when Abraham was born. It is 
now about six thousand eight hundred years old according 
to Manetho and Mariette, or about four thousand eight 
hundred according to the computation of Bunsen. One's 
imagination recoils upon the brink of such a gulf of time. 

The door of this pyramid was carried off\, with other 
precious spoils, by Lepsius, and is now in the museum at 
Berlin. The evidence that identifies the inscription is 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 193 

tolerably direct. According to Manetho, an Egyptian 
historian who wrote in Greek and lived in the reign of 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, King Ouenephes built for himself 
a pyramid at a place called Kokhome. Now a tablet dis- 
covered in the Serapeum by Mariette gives the name of 
Ka-kem to the necropolis of Sakkara ; and as the pyramid 
in stages is not only the largest on this platform, but is also 
the only one in which a royal cartouche has been found, 
the conclusion seems obvious. 

When a building has already stood for five or six thou- 
sand years in a climate where mosses and lichens, and all 
those natural signs of age to which we are accustomed in 
Europe are unknown, it is not to be supposed that a few 
centuries more or less can tell upon its outward appear- 
ance ; yet to my thinking the pyramid of Ouenephes looks 
older than those of Gizeh. If this be only fancy, it gives 
one, at all events, the impression of belonging structurally 
to a ruder architectural period. The idea of a monument 
composed of diminishing platforms is in its nature more 
primitive than that of a smooth four-sided pyramid. We 
remarked that the masonry on one side — I think on the 
side facing eastwards — was in a much more perfect con- 
dition than on either of the others. 

Wilkinson describes the interior as " a hollow dome sup- 
ported here and there by wooden rafters," and states that 
the sepulchral chamber was lined with blue porcelain tiles. 

Making up now for lost time, we rode on as far as the 
house built in 1850 for Mariette's accommodation during 



194 EGYPT 

the excavation of the Serapeum — a labour which extended 
over a period of more than four years. 

The Serapeum, it need hardly be said, is the famous and 
long-lost sepulchral temple of the sacred bulls. These 
bulls (honoured by the Egyptians as successive incarnations 
of Osiris) inhabited the temple of Apis at Memphis while 
they lived ; and being mummied after death, were buried in 
catacombs prepared for them in the desert. In 1850, 
Mariette, travelling in the interests of the French Govern- 
ment, discovered both the temple and the catacombs, being, 
according to his own narrative, indebted for the clue to a 
certain passage in Strabo, which describes the Temple of 
Serapis as being situate in a district where the sand was so 
drifted by the wind that the approach to it was in danger of 
being overwhelmed J while the sphinxes on either side of 
the great avenue were already more or less buried, some 
having only their heads above the surface. " If Strabo had 
not written this passage," says Mariette, " it is probable 
that the Serapeum would still be lost under the sands of 
the necropolis of Sakkara. One day, however (in 1850), 
being attracted to Sakkara by my Egyptological studies, I 
perceived the head of a sphinx showing above the surface. 
It evidently occupied its original position. Close by lay a 
libation table on which was engraved a hieroglyphic inscrip- 
tion to Apis-Osiris. Then that passage in Strabo came to 
my memory, and I knew that beneath my feet lay the 
avenue leading to the long and vainly sought Serapeum. 
Without saying a word to any one I got some workmen 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 195 

together and we began excavating. The beginning was 
difficult i but soon the lions, the peacocks, the Greek 
statues of the Dromos, the inscribed tablets of the Temple 
of Nectambo^ rose up from the sands. Thus was the Sera- 
peum discovered." 

The labour was immense, and the difficulties were in- 
numerable. The ground had to be contested inch by inch. 
" In certain places," says Mariette, " the sand was fluid, 
so to speak, and baffled us like water continually driven 
back and seeking to regain its level." 

If, however, the toil was great, so also was the reward. 
A main avenue terminated by the semicircular platform, 
around which stood statues of famous Greek philosophers 
and poets ; a second avenue at right angles to the first j the 
remains of the great Temple of the Serapeum ; three 
smaller temples j and three distinct groups of Apis cata- 
combs were brought to light. A descending passage open- 
ing from a chamber in the great Temple led to the 
catacombs — vast labyrinths of vaults and passages hewn out 
of the solid rock on which the Temples were built. These 
three groups of excavations represent three epochs of 
Egyptian history. The first and most ancient series con- 
sists of isolated vaults dating from the Eighteenth to the 
Twenty-second Dynasty; that is to say, from about b. c. 
1703 to B. c. 980. The second group, which dates from 
the reign of Sheshonk I. (Twenty-second Dynasty, b. c. 

1 Nectambo I. and Nectambo II. were the last native Pharaohs of An- 
cient Egypt and flourished between B. c. 378 and B. c. 340, 



196 EGYPT 

980 ) to that of Tirhakah, the last king of the Twenty-fifth 
Dynasty, is more systematically planned, and consists of one 
long tunnel bordered on each side by a row of funereal 
chambers. The third belongs to the Greek period, be- 
ginning with Psammetichus I. (Twenty-sixth Dynasty, b. c. 
665) and ending with the latest Ptolemies. Of these, the 
first are again choked with sand ; the second are consid- 
ered unsafe j and the third only is accessible to travellers. 

After a short but toilsome walk and some delay outside a 
prison-like door at the bottom of a steep descent, we were 
admitted by the guardian — a gaunt old Arab with a lantern 
in his hand. It was not an inviting looking place within. 
The outer daylight fell upon a rough step or two, beyond 
which all was dark. We went in. A hot, heavy atmos- 
phere met us on the threshold ; the door fell to with a dull 
clang, the echoes of which went wandering away as if into 
the central recesses of the earth ; the Arab chattered and 
gesticulated. He was telling us that we were now in the 
great vestibule, and that it measured ever so many feet in 
this and that direction ; but we could see nothing — neither 
the vaulted roof overhead, nor the walls on any side, nor 
even the ground beneath our feet. It was like the darkness 
of infinite space. 

A lighted candle was given to each person, and the Arab 
led the way. He went dreadfully fast, and it seemed at 
every step as if one were on the brink of some frightful 
chasm. Gradually, however, our eyes became accustomed 
to the gloom and we found that we had passed out of the 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 197 

vestibule into the first great corridor. All was vague, mys- 
terious, shadowy. A dim perspective loomed out of the 
darkness. The lights twinkled and flitted, like wandering 
sparks of stars. The Arab held his lantern to the walls 
here and there, and showed us some votive tablets inscribed 
with records of pious visits paid by devout Egyptians to 
the sacred tombs. Of these they found five hundred, when 
the catacombs were first opened ; but Mariette sent nearly 
all to the Louvre. 

A few steps farther and we came to the tombs — a suc- 
cession of great vaulted chambers hewn out at irregular 
distances along both sides of the central corridor, and sunk 
some six or eight feet below the surface. In the middle 
of each chamber stood an enormous sarcophagus of polished 
granite. The Arab, flitting on ahead like a black ghost, 
paused a moment before each cavernous opening, flashed 
the light of his lantern on the sarcophagus, and sped away 
again, leaving us to follow as we could. 

Having gone on thus for a distance of nearly two hun- 
dred yards, we came to a chamber containing the first 
hieroglyphed sarcophagus we had yet seen ; all the rest 
being polished, but plain. Here the Arab paused ; and 
finding access provided by means of a flight of wooden 
steps, we went down into the chamber, walked round the 
sarcophagus, peeped inside by the help of a ladder, and 
examined the hieroglyphs with which it is covered. Enor- 
mous as they look from above, one can form no idea of the 
bulk of these huge monolithic masses except from the level 



198 EGYPT 

on which they stand. This sarcophagus, which dates from 
the reign of Amasis of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, measured 
fourteen feet in length by eleven in height, and consisted 
of a single block of highly-wrought black granite. Four 
persons might sit in it round a small card-table, and play a 
rubber comfortably. 

From this point the corridor branches off for another 
two hundred yards or so, leading always to more chambers 
and more sarcophagi of which last there are. altogether 
twenty-four. Three only are inscribed i none measure less 
than from thirteen to fourteen feet in length and all are 
empty. The lids in every instance have been pushed back 
a little way, and some are fractured ; but the spoilers have 
been unable wholly to remove them. According to Mari- 
ette, the place was pillaged by the early Christians, who, 
besides carrying ofF whatever they could find in the way 
of gold and jewels, seem to have destroyed the mum- 
mies of the bulls and razed the great Temple nearly to the 
ground. 

Far more startling, however, than the discovery of either 
Apis or jewels, was the sight beheld by Mariette on first 
entering that long-closed sepulchral chamber. The mine 
being sprung and the opening cleared, he went in alone ; 
and there, on the thin layer of sand that covered the floor, 
he found the footprints of the workmen who, 3,700 years 
before, had laid that shapeless mummy in its tomb and 
closed the doors upon it, as they believed, forever. 

And now — for the afternoon is already waning fast — the 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 199 

donkeys are brought round and we are told that it is time 
to move on. We have the site of Memphis and the 
famous prostrate colossus yet to see, and the long road lies 
all before us. So back vi^e go across the desolate sands j 
and with a last, long, wistful glance at the pyramid in plat- 
forms, go down from the territory of the dead into the land 
of the living. 

There is a wonderful fascination about this pyramid. 
One is never weary of looking at it — of repeating to one's 
self that it is indeed the oldest building on the face of the 
whole earth. The king who created it came to the throne, 
according to Manetho, about eighty years after the death 
of Mena, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. All we 
have of him is his pyramid ; all we know of him is his 
name. And these belong, as it were, to the infancy of the 
human race. In dealing with Egyptian dates, one is apt to 
think lightly of periods that count only by centuries ; but 
it is a habit of mind which leads to error, and it should be 
combated. The present writer found it useful to be con- 
stantly comparing relative chronological eras ; as, for 
instance, in realizing the immense antiquity of the Sakkara 
pyramid, it is some help to remember that from the time 
when it was built by King Ouenephes to the time when 
King Khufu erected the great Pyramid of Gizeh, there 
probably lies a space of years equivalent to that which, in the 
history of England, extends from the date of the Conquest 
to the accession of George the Second. And yet Khufu 
himself — the Cheops of the Greek historians — is but a 



200 EGYPT 

shadowy figure hovering upon the threshold of Egyptian 
history. 

And now the desert is left behind, and we are nearing 
the palms that lead to Memphis. We have, of course, 
been dipping into Herodotus — every one takes Herodotus 
up the Nile — and our heads are full of the ancient glories 
of this famous city. We know that Mena turned the 
course of the river in order to build it on this very spot, 
and that all the most illustrious Pharaohs adorned it with 
temples, palaces, pylons and precious sculptures. We had 
read of the great Temple of Ptah that Rameses the Great 
enriched with colossi of himself; and of the sanctuary 
where Apis lived in state, taking his exercise in a pillared 
courtyard where every column was a statue; and of the 
artificial lake, and the sacred groves and the obelisks, and 
all the wonders of a city which even in its later days was 
one of the most populous in Egypt. 

From the Serapeum, buried and ruined as it is, one can- 
not but come away with a profound impression of the 
splendour and power of a religion which could command 
for its myths such faith, such homage and such public 
works. 

And now we are once more in the midst of the palm- 
woods, threading our way among the same mounds that we 
passed in the morning. Presently those in front strike away 
from the beaten road across a grassy flat to the right ; and 
the next moment we are all gathered round the brink of a 
muddy pool in the midst of which lies a shapeless block of 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 201 

blackened and corroded limestone. This, it seems, is the 
famous prostrate colossus of Rameses the Great, face down- 
wards, visible only when the pools left by the inundation 
have evaporated and all the muddy hollows are dried up. 
It is one of two which stood at the entrance to the great 
Temple of Ptah.' Where is the Temple itself? Where 
are the pylons, the obelisks, the avenues of sphinxes ? 
Where, in short, is Memphis ? 

The dragoman shrugs his shoulders and points to the 
barren mounds among the palms. 

They look like gigantic dust-heaps, and stand from thirty 
to forty feet above the plain. Nothing grows upon them 
save here and there a tuft of stunted palm ; and their sub- 
stance seems to consist chiefly of crumbled brick, broken 
potsherds and fragments of limestone. Some few traces of 
brick foundations, and an occasional block or two of shaped 
stone are to be seen in places low down against the foot of 
one or two of the mounds ; but one looks in vain for any 
sign which might indicate the outline of a boundary wall or 
the position of a great public building. 

And is this all ? 

No — not quite all. There are some mud-huts yonder, in 
among the trees ; and in front of one of these we find a 

1 The first objects of interest after leaving the station are the Colossi of 
Rameses II. : these formerly marked the entrance to a temple. The first, 
made of granite, lies prostrate ; its length with the crown, which has fallen 
off, is over thirty feet. The second colussos is of limestone, forty-two feet 
high ; it stands on an enclosure. The foundations of the Temple of Ptah 
can be seen a little to the north. — Egypt and How to See It (191 1). 



202 EGYPT 

number of sculptured fragments — battered sphinxes, torsos 
without legs, sitting figures without heads — in green, black 
and red granite. Ranged in an irregular semicircle on the 
sward, they seem to sit in forlorn conclave, half solemn, 
half ludicrous, with the goats browsing round, and the little 
Arab children hiding behind them. 

And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities — 
a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, 
and a name ? One looks round and tries in vain to realize 
the lost splendours of the place. Where is the Memphis 
that King Mena came from Thinis to found — the Memphis 
of Ouenephes and Khufu, and Khafra, and all the early 
kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent 
desert ? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of Strabo, 
of ' Abd-el-Latif ? Where are those stately ruins which, 
even in the Middle Ages, extended over a space estimated 
at " half a day's journey in every direction " ? One can 
hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, 
or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. 
Yet here it stood — here where the grass is green, and the 
palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the 
verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site 
of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies 
where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil 
sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we see 
the village of Mitrahineh and catch a distant glimpse of the 
pyramids of Gizeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial 
lake excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis 



SAKKARA AND MEMPHIS 203 

survives in the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of 
the mounds Tell Monf — ^just as Sakkara fossilizes the 
name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the 
Memphite Osiris. 

No capital in the vi^orld dates so far back as this, or kept 
its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years 
before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one 
dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek 
and the Roman ; it was, even in its decadence, second only 
to Alexandria in population and extent ; and it continued to 
be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then 
became the quarry from which Fostat (Old Cairo) was 
built ; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank, the 
people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital 
to desolation and decay. 

Still a vast field of ruins remained. 'Abd-el-Latif, writ- 
ing at the commencement of the Thirteenth Century, 
speaks with enthusiasm of the colossal statues and lions, the 
enormous pedestals, the archways formed of only three 
stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to be 
seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes 
had led him to the Nile, might have found some of the 
palaces and temples of Memphis still standing ; and Sandys, 
who in A. D. 1 6 10 went at least as far south of Cairo as 
Kafr-el-Iyat, says that " up the river for twenty miles' 
space there was nothing but ruines." Since then, how- 
ever, the very " ruines " have vanished ; the palms have had 
time to grow; and modern Cairo has doubtless absorbed 



204 EGYPT 

all the building material that remained from the Middle 
Ages. 

Memphis is a place to read about and think about, and 
remember ; but it is a disappointing place to see. To miss 
it, however, would be to miss the first link in the whole 
chain of monumental history which unites Egypt of 
antiquity with^ the world of to-day. Those melancholy 
mounds and that heron-haunted lake must be seen, if only 
that they may take their due place in the picture-gallery of 
one's memory. 



THE FAYOUM 

LAURENCE OLIPHANT 

ABOUT seventy miles to the southwest of Cairo, 
and twenty-five miles from the Nile, in a depres- 
sion of the Libyan desert, lies a region celebrated 
above all others in Egypt for the luxuriance of its vegeta- 
tion and the variety of its products. Known in modern 
days as the Fayoum,' it was called by the Greeks the Arsi- 
noite Nome, and by the early Egyptians Phiom, or " the dis- 
trict of the marsh " ; and a tradition still exists among the 
country people that this marsh was reclaimed by Joseph the 
son of Jacob. Whether it derived another and equally an- 
cient appellation of Ta-She, or " Land of the Lake," from 
the Birket-el-Kurun (Lake of the Horn) — a large sheet of 
water on its western margin — or from the once celebrated 
Lake Moeris, the dikes of which still remain to indicate its 

* The province of Fayoum lies to the west of the Nile Valley about fifty 
jniles south of Cairo. It is an artificial province created from the Bahr- 
el-Yussuf (River of Joseph) about four thousand years ago. This river 
flows wrestward from the Nile and is divided into many small canals that 
water the country. Roses, figs, apricots, grapes, olives, corn and cotton 
grow with remarkable luxuriance. On the north, east and south hills 
separate the Fayoum from the Libyan Desert. On the northwest is Lake 
Karoun. The capital is Medinet-el-Fayoum through which the Bahr-el- 
Yussuf flows. Arsinoe lies to the north and north of it the town of Sen- 
nour^s. 



2o6 EGYPT 

former site, is not possible to determine; but its wealth of 
water in all ages was calculated to invest it with a peculiar 
charm in a country dependent, not upon the rainfall, but 
upon natural conditions, for its supply of that commodity. 
Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny have all written in terms of 
enthusiasm of this oasis, while modern travellers have be- 
stowed comparatively little attention upon it. 

At the station of Wasta, fifty miles from Cairo, the 
road branches off to the Fayoum. 

We now emerge from the desert, and the road gradually 
ascends for a few miles to a summit-level of about a 
hundred and forty feet above the level of the sea — as great 
an altitude probably as that attained by any railway in 
the country. On our left is a range of sand-hills, and 
beyond it we can distinctly observe the depression which 
was once filled by the waters of Lake Moeris, and a portion 
of which is now a sandy desert ; its southern extremity is 
marked by the Pyramid of Illahoon (Lahoun), also clearly 
visible. A little further on we cross the Bahr Bela Ma, a 
broad wady with precipitous sides, down the centre of 
which winds a narrow sluggish stream ; and near it we 
observe the remains of some of the old embankments of the 
lake. In a (tw minutes more we are cheered by the sight 
of a grove of date-trees, and our short traject of fifteen 
miles of desert is at an end. We are at El Edwa, the 
first village of the Fayoum ; and a run of five miles more 
through richly cultivated country lands us at Medinet-el- 
Fayoum, the capital of the province, and practically the 




o 
< 

H 

S 
tq 



THE FAYOUM 207 

terminus of the railway, so far as ordinary travel is con- 
cerned. 

I was lulled to sleep by the wailing and sighing of the 
numerous water-wheels or sakkyas^ which are a special 
characteristic of the Fayoum. They differ from those of 
other parts of Egypt, inasmuch as the motive power does 
not consist of oxen or buffaloes, but of the water itself, — 
the natural incline of the country giving the canals a 
sufficient current to enable them to turn these huge under- 
shot wheels, which are made of date-fibre, and on which 
are fixed alternately earthen jars and wooden paddles ; as 
they revolve, they groan and strain under the pressure, 
as though some mortal injury was being inflicted upon 
them. It is not the harsh creaking of wood, but the 
plaintive moan of overstretched fibre ; and as the whole 
province resounds with their lamentations, one almost feels 
inclined to pity it as the victim of some serious nervous 
disorder. There was something very weird in the sound 
that first night, as with mournful cadence it rose and fell 
in the still air, now sinking almost to a sigh, now rising to 
a harsh scream ; and my first impulse in the morning was 
to go and inspect the primitive mechanism which thus 
fertilizes the whole country with its never-ending day and 
night rotation. As Medinet-el-Fayoum is the great centre 
of water distribution for the province, there are probably 
a greater number of these water-wheels collected here than 
elsewhere, and the place is surrounded by a network of 
canals and rivulets which encompass it at all seasons with 



2o8 EGYPT 

a setting of the richest verdure, and have made its orchards 
and gardens the theme of the traveller and historian from 
the earliest times. All this is due to the Bahr-el-Yussuf, 
or " river of Joseph," which is, in fact, a branch of the 
Nile, diverted from that river at Assiout, and which, after a 
tortuous course of upwards of two hundred miles along the 
base of the Libyan hills and parallel with the Nile, takes 
advantage of a depression in the chain, and is conducted 
by sluices at Illahoon (Lahoun) into the province — flowing 
through the town of Medinet in a broad deep stream until 
it reaches its northern end, when it is dammed across and 
diverted into seven channels and ceases to be navigable. 
Before this occurs, however, numerous minor canals and 
sakkyas keep robbing it of its water ; and just outside our 
place of abode, which was at the entry to the town, three 
considerable streams, all turning water-wheels, diverged 
from it into the country. Many traditions connect Joseph 
in the popular mind with this river and city ; but nothing 
definite upon the subject has been discovered. A Copt 
told me that the Fayoum was the creation of Joseph when 
Pharaoh gave him pleins pouvoirs to deal with the famine. 
That he then conceived the idea of diverting the waters 
of the Nile into this natural depression, and turned what 
had formerly been a marsh into a most fertile province ; 
and a further tradition exists that he was buried here, 
and that it was from this neighbourhood that his body 
was removed by the Jews at the time of the exodus. 

There can be no doubt that in ancient days the culti- 



THE FAYOUM 209 

vable area of the oasis was much greater than it is at 
present, as the indications of a town and irrigation works near 
the ruins of Kasr Kharoon at the southwestern extremity of 
the Birket-el-Karoun/ where it is now a desert, abundantly 
testify. At the present day it measures twenty-three miles 
north and south, and twenty-eight miles east and west. The 
town of Medinet-el-Fayoum is situated on a plateau which 
it about the same level as the Nile, From here the 
country trends rapidly to the Birket-el-Karoun, which is, 
according to Linant, ninety-four feet below the level of the 
Mediterranean, thus falling about one hundred and seventy 
feet in fifteen miles. The Birket-el-Karoun is a lake of 
brackish water about thirty-five miles long and seven 
broad; and into this drain fall the waters of the Bahr-el- 
Yussuf, after they have fertilized the whole area of the 
province. The result is that the country is intersected 
by numerous more or less swiftly-running streams, which, 
cutting through the soft soil, often form little gorges of 
great beauty and luxuriance, as at the village of Fidimin, 
where they overflow their dams in cascades — a scenic 
feature unknown in any other part of Egypt. Where 
these dams exist there are often little lakes, embowered in 
palm-groves and gardens, thus giving the Fayoum a pre- 
eminence, so far as beauty of landscape is concerned, over 
every other part of the country. 

A profitable occupation was to wander over the ruins of 
the ancient city of Crocodilopolis Arsinoe j and this was a 
1 Lake Moeris. 



2IO EGYPT 

never ending source of interest and amusement. The high 
mounds of debris^ which cover an immense area of ground, 
were scarcely a mile from our abode, and consist of an 
enormous accumulation of potsherds, bones, bricks, rags, 
fibre and dust. The highest mound is fifty feet above the 
level of the plain, and its summit commands a panoramic 
view of the whole of the province. 

It is impossible to describe the rich and glowing beauty 
of the sunsets I have seen from this spot. The extra- 
ordinary clearness of the atmosphere brought out with the 
utmost distinctness the most distant outline. In the far 
east one could see the forms of the desert ranges beyond 
the Nile, faintly blushing in the last rays of the sun. 
Nearer still are the sand-hills of the desert on this side of 
the river, with the Pyramids of Hawara and Lahoun stand- 
ing out conspicuously ; then succeeds a carpet of cultiva- 
tion, to the brilliant green of which the more sombre hues 
of the palm-groves furnish a fitting contrast; amidst all 
this luxuriance water is sparkling and winding everywhere. 
In the extreme western distance we catch glimpses of the 
" Lake of the Horn," lying in the shadow of the Libyan 
hills ; while in the immediate foreground the quaint 
cemetery and mud-houses of Medinet-el-Fayoum which 
crown the high banks of the Bahr-el-Yussuf, so uncouth 
and barbarous looking at other times, are now all melted 
into a confused haze, as the sun setting behind the town 
throws it into a bluish-purple shadow, from which shoot 
here and there a minaret or a palm-tree. 



THE FAYOUM 211 

The Egyptian monarch whose name is most intimately 
associated with this province, and to whom it probably 
owed, in the first instance, its development into a region 
of exceptional fertility, was Amenemhat the Third, who 
reigned in Egypt about 3,000 years before Christ, and 600 
years, therefore, before the arrival of Joseph in the country. 
In those days Egypt was called " the Land of Khemi " the 
" Ham " of the Bible, or " the Black Country " — a name 
derived from the blackness of the soil. Amenemhat seems 
to have had a great talent for engineering, and for irrigating 
this black soil in the most effectual manner. It is almost 
beyond a doubt that he it was who led the Bahr-el-Yussuf 
through the Libyan hills, and formed the vast reservoir of 
Lake Moeris ; for the Greeks called him Ameris, believing 
that the Lake Moeris, which they regarded as a marvel of 
engineering skill, was called after him. The word meri^ 
however, is Egyptian for lake. On its margin was situated 
the famous labyrinth ; and here blocks of stone have been 
found bearing the name of Amenemhat. This lake ex- 
tended to the city, which in those days was called Shat, or 
Pi-Sebek, " the abode of Sebek " ; it was the headquarters 
of the worship of the sacred crocodile kept in Lake Moeris, 
— hence the name by which this city was afterwards 
known, of Crocodilopolis. Sebek is the name of the 
Egyptian god, who is always represented with the head of 
a crocodile ; and that reptile was held especially sacred to 
him in the Arsinoite and several other nomes. He was by 
no means generally worshipped, however ; indeed a certain 



212 EGYPT 

Typhonic or infernal character was attributed to him. 
And this was specially the case in the adjoining Hera- 
cleopolitan nome, where the inhabitants worshipped the 
ichneumon, the greatest enemy of the crocodile; and it 
was their hatred which finally caused the destruction of the 
Labyrinth, 

The oasis is next mentioned in the days of Osorkon the 
First, of the Twenty-second Dynasty, when Crocodilopolis 
was so embellished and extended by that monarch that it 
was called " the city of Osorkon " in the celebrated stele of 
Piankhi. This Osorkon was the 'Levzh of the Bible, who 
invaded Palestine with an army of a million of men, and 
was defeated by Asa. He lived about 950 years before 
Christ. Seven hundred years after this, Crocodilopolis lost 
its uncouth name, and Ptolemy Philadelphus bestowed upon 
it the more euphonious appellation of Arsinoe, after his 
wife, and the " Land of the Lake " became " the Arsinoite 
Nome." One of the modern names for Medinet-el- 
Fayoum is Medinet-el-Faris, or the " City of the Horseman 
or Knight " ; and these ruins, after having been called suc- 
cessively Pi-Sebek, Crocodilopolis and Arsinoe, are known 
in the present day to the natives as Kom Faris. The 
most perfect relics of the magnificence of this once rich 
and populous city are to be found in the Mosque of Kait 
Bey, which spans the Bahr-el-Yussuf, at the point where it 
finally emerges from the town, and which is itself a most 
picturesque ruin, about 400 years old. It has long since 
lost its roof, and from its centre, by the side of a well with 



THE FAYOUM 213 

an old stone basin, rise two tall date-trees ; but the marble 
and granite columns, with their Corinthian capitals, which 
are all still standing, came from Arsinoe. There are two 
small fluted marble columns near the pulpit, which are par- 
ticularly delicate and beautiful. The pulpit itself is an 
elaborate work of arabesque, inlaid with ivory. On the 
bridge in front of this mosque are the remains of an old 
wall ; and the view of the Bahr-el-Yussuf seen through the 
crumbling arches, as it winds away under the date-trees 
which fringe its banks, when the women arc filling their 
water-jars, is one of the most striking in the town, and 
equalled only, perhaps, by one a little further on, where 
there is another old mosque, also roofless, and also orna- 
mented with columns plundered from Arsinoe, that stands 
on the brink of the river, and is irresistible in its situation 
and picturesque decay, from an artistic point of view. 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MOERIS 

LAURENCE OLIPHANT 

THE first view of the Labyrinth was eminently 
disappointing and consisted of nothing but 
mounds of ruins. However, in the midst of 
these we came upon the traces of what probably was once 
a temple of some magnificence, though all that now re- 
mains of it are some large blocks of granite and limestone, 
and the shaft and capital of a papyrus column with traces 
of sculpture. Some blocks here have been disinterred, 
which are now covered with sand, bearing the name of 
Amenemhat HI. Traversing this waste of ruin, we reached 
the base of the Pyramid of Hawara, and found a cool spot 
in its shade in which to lunch, prior to a more minute ex- 
amination of the surrounding objects. We began already 
to feel, however, that our imaginations had been unduly ex- 
cited by the descriptions of the writers of antiquity by whom 
they had been visited. 

Herodotus writes : " I have seen this monument ; and I 
believe that if one were to unite all the buildings and all 
the works of the Greeks, they would yet be inferior to this 
edifice, both in labour and expense, although the temples of 
Ephesus and Samos are justly celebrated. Even the Pyra- 
mids are certainly monuments which surpass their expecta- 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MCERIS 215 

tion, and each one of them may be compared with the 
greatest productions of the Greeks. Nevertheless, the 
Labyrinth is greater still. We find in its interior twelve 
roofed aul^e^ the doors of which are alternately opposite 
each other. Six of these aulte face to the north, and six to 
the south ; they are contiguous to one another, and encir- 
cled by an enceinte, formed by an exterior wall. The 
chambers that the buildings of the Labyrinth contain are 
all double, one underground and the other built above it. 
They number 3,000, 1,500 in each level. We traversed 
those that are above ground, and we speak of what we 
have seen ; but for those which are below, we can only say 
what we were told, for on no account whatever would the 
guardians consent to show them to us. They say that 
they contain the tombs of the kings who in ancient times 
built the Labyrinth, and those of the sacred crocodiles, so 
that we can only report on these chambers what we have 
heard. As to those of the upper story, we have seen noth- 
ing greater among the works of man. The infinite variety 
of the corridors and the galleries which communicate with 
one another, and which one traverses before arriving at the 
aula, overwhelm with surprise those who visit these places, 
and who pass now from one of the aulce into the chambers 
which surround it, now from one of these chambers into 
the porticoes, or again from the porticoes into the other 
aula. The ceilings are everywhere of stone, like the walls, 
and these walls are covered with numberless figures en- 
graved in the stone. Each one of these aulee is ornamented 



2i6 EGYPT 

with a peristyle executed in white stone, perfectly fitted. 
At the angle where the Labyrinth terminates there is a 
pyramid 240 feet in height, decorated with large figures 
sculptured in relief. There is an underground passage of 
communication with this pyramid." 

Strabo, who visited the Labyrinth hundreds of years later, 
was no less struck with the magnificence and design of this 
wonderful structure. 

Our first proceeding after luncheon was to scramble to 
the top of the Pyramid so as to get a bird's-eye view of the 
ruins. Strabo apparently overestimated its dimensions. 
When perfect the base was fifty feet less each way than he 
gives it ; and Herodotus, who puts the height at 240 feet, 
was more nearly right than Strabo, who estimates it at 400. 
It is by no means an imposing structure, and is one of four 
built of crude brick mixed with straw, one being at Lahoun 
and two at Sakkara, If it was built as Strabo tells us by 
Ismandes, who is identical with Semempses, the fifth king 
of the First Dynasty, then it is the oldest pyramid existing 
in Egypt. It has been suggested that it was built by 
Asychis, the fourth king of the Third Dynasty; but even 
in that case it must rank immediately below Meidoun and 
Dahshur, which become the oldest. The ground for this 
hypothesis is, that Herodotus tells us that, according to the 
priests, a king named Asychis, desirious of eclipsing all his 
predecessors, left a pyramid of brick as a monument of 
his reign, with the following inscription engraved on the 
stone : 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MCERIS 217 

" Despise me not in comparison with the stone pyramids, 
for I surpass them all, as much as Zeus surpasses the other 
gods. A pole was plunged into the lake and the mud 
which clave thereto was gathered, and bricks were made of 
the mud, and so I was formed." 

It appears to have been originally built in stages, and 
from its summit we could obtain an idea of the shape of the 
Labyrinth, which was of a horseshoe form, and of the po- 
sition and size of the temple, the remains of which were 
mapped out at our feet. On the opposite side of the 
Bahr-es-Sherki we overlooked a congeries of crude brick- 
built chambers, all roofless. To the north was a long line 
of small chambers with the crumbling walls of others scat- 
tered here and there. The form of Lake Moeris, on the 
margin of which this pyramid was built, might also be de- 
tected by the aid of a strong imagination ; and, about eight 
miles ofF, the Pyramid of Lahoun stood out sharply against 
the distant line of the hills beyond the Nile. To the 
southward a long grove of date-trees marked the limit of 
the oasis ; and to the westward the town of Medinet, sur- 
rounded by gardens and palm-trees, formed an attractive 
feature in the landscape. To the eastward, all was desert, 
bounded by sand-hills. A closer inspection of the ruins, 
after we had descended from the Pyramid, on the left bank 
of the Bahr-es-Sherki, disclosed little of interest beyond a 
curious sort of double underground passage, formed by flags 
of limestone. The upper passage seemed to have been 
roofed in on a level with the surface of the soil, and below 



2i8 EGYPT 

this again there was a second one, which, however, was so 
choked with sand that it was impossible to follow it. 

There can be no doubt that we owe the modern word 
labyrinth to the strange accumulation of chambers and 
tortuous passages which once existed on the shores of Lake 
Moeris. According to Manethon, the Labyrinth derived its 
name from King Labarys, its founder, also known as 
Amenemhat IIL j but another derivation has been suggested 
which possesses the combined merit of extreme antiquity 
and originality. It seems that the old Egyptian word for 
the mouth of a reservoir, which Lake Mceris undoubtedly 
was, is ra-hunt or la-hunt. Hence one of the names of the 
lake was " Hunt." 

In allusion to Lake Moeris, over which we were now 
looking, Herodotus says : " Wonderful as is the Laby- 
rinth the work called the Lake of Moeris, which is close 
by the Labyrinth, is still more astonishing." Strabo says of 
it : " Owing to its size and depth, it is capable of receiving 
the superabundance of water during the inundation without 
overflowing the habitations and crops j but later, when the 
water subsides, and after the lake has given up its excess 
through one of its two mouths, both it and the canal retain 
water enough for purposes of irrigation. This is accom- 
plished by natural means, but at both ends of the canal 
there are also lock-gates by means of which the engineers 
can regulate the influx and efflux of the water." 

According to the estimate of Linant Bey, to whom is due 
the discovery of the site of the Labyrinth and the position 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MCERIS 219 

of Lake Moeris, this sheet of water must have been about 
sixty miles in circumference and with an average depth of 
twenty feet. Pomponius Mela says that it was navigated 
by large vessels, which conveyed the produce of the Fayoum 
to other parts of Egypt. 

The Pyramid and Labyrinth were situated at the point 
where the river entered it, and the vast expanse of green 
over which the eye wanders between the Pyramid and 
Medinet was formerly covered by its waters. Wherever 
the natural formation of the country did not restrain them, 
immense dikes were built, which must have been in some 
places thirty feet high, and which, to judge from the traces 
that exist on the north and west sides, must have been 
about thirty miles long, with an average breadth of one 
hundred and fifty feet — a work on a scale which would 
have appalled engineers not accustomed to build pyramids. 
Linant Bey calculates that this reservoir must have irrigated 
a superficies of 600,000 acres, as, besides feeding the 
Fayoum, he believes that its waters were carried down 
into the province of Gizeh, and so ultimately into the old 
Canopic branch of the Nile at Mariout. Nor can one 
wonder that an artificial lake of such great extent should 
have seemed a prodigy of engineering skill to the ancients. 
In addition to its great utility as a fertilizing agent, it was 
invested with a character of sanctity which gave it a wide 
celebrity. The sacred crocodile, which was carefully 
tended and petted in its waters, was an object of the deep- 
est veneration to the inhabitants of the Arsinoite Nome, 



220 EGYPT 

who treated it with the most marked respect, and kept it at 
considerable expense, while a most elaborate cuisine pro- 
vided it with dainties. " Geese, fish, and various fresh 
meats," says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, " were dressed pur- 
posely for it ; they ornamented its head with earrings, its 
feet with bracelets, and its neck with necklaces of gold and 
artificial stones; it was rendered perfectly tame by kind 
treatment; and after death its body was embalmed in a 
most sumptuous manner." 

It was rather unfortunate for the crocodile and his wor- 
shippers that the inhabitants of the adjoining Heracleopoli- 
tan Nome worshipped the ichneumon, the bitter enemy of 
the crocodile, which, it is reported, waged war upon him 
by the original device of crawling down his throat when he 
was asleep, and feeding upon his intestines. The antipathy 
between the crocodile and the ichneumon, in consequence 
of this unfair mode of proceeding, seems to have extended 
to the worshippers of the two animals which led, during 
the reign of the Romans, to disputes that terminated in 
bloodshed, and made the contending parties forget the re- 
spect due to the sacred monuments of their adversaries to 
such an extent that the destruction of the Labyrinth by the 
Heracleopolitans was the final result. 

Altogether the vestiges of these ruins conveyed as much 
the idea of a necropolis as of an assemblage of council 
chambers, and it is not unlikely that its primitive design 
was simply to serve as a vast sepulchre like that at Sakkara. 
There can be little doubt that pyramids invariably form the 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MCERIS 221 

centres of such burial places — indeed Herodotus tells us he 
was informed by his guides that the lower chambers were 
used for funeral purposes and Amenemhat may have se- 
lected this spot on the shores of the lake he had created, as 
his own resting-place and that of the chief men of his 
reign. From the records upon the inscriptions where his 
name has been found, it is almost beyond a doubt that he is 
buried here, although not within the Pyramid ; and the 
mode of sepulture among the ancient Egyptians renders 
it in the opinion of some Egyptologists extremely likely 
that this vast congeries of apartments, which at a later 
period were converted into council-halls, were origi- 
nally mortuary chambers, but upon a scale of such 
magnificence and vastness that the subsequent dynasties 
considered them available for other purposes. Indeed we 
have no record of the Labyrinth being used for great im- 
perial assemblies until the period immediately preceding the 
Psamtikides of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, or about nine- 
teen hundred years after the time of Amenemhat, its con- 
structor. At the same time, it is not impossible that the 
Labyrinth was used for other purposes as well as those of 
sepulture, even from the earliest period ; for the assemblage 
of twelve palaces or aulce^ as described by Herodotus, 
must have had some reference to the twelve nomes into 
which Egypt was divided before the number was increased 
by Rameses II. to thirty-six. And we may be safe in say- 
ing that if we carry our imaginations back 3,500 years, or 
even more, the spot upon which we were now standing 



222 EGYPT 

presented an aspect of scenic beauty, or architectural mag- 
nificence, and was invested with a character of political and 
religious importance, unrivalled in the world, which it re- 
tained for nearly two thousand years. It was evidently 
selected, from its central position on the boundary-line that 
divided Upper from Lower Egypt, for the great regal, po- 
litical and sacerdotal rites which were celebrated here. 
Standing on the shores of a beautiful lake, the waters of 
which reflected the magnificent city of Crocodilopolis 
Arsinoe immediately opposite, and which was navigated by 
numberless craft, and surrounded by palm-groves and those 
gardens of fruits and flowers for which the province was 
celebrated, the Labyrinth occupied a position of great scenic 
beauty and political significance. It was the great council- 
hall of Egypt. Hither flocked the representatives of the 
different nomes to the great assembly of the nation ; here 
congregated the high priests to celebrate those great re- 
ligious ceremonies which demanded the united homage of 
the people. Here probably kings were crowned, laws were 
made, great public works decided upon, questions of war or 
peace settled, — in a word, in this congeries of palaces, under 
the shadow of the Pyramid, on the banks of this vast artifi- 
cial lake, that had been adorned and beautified by the taste 
and resources of successive centuries, all the highest inter- 
ests of the nation were discussed in assemblies composed of 
the great powers of the State— the king, the priesthood and 
the army. It is difficult to associate in one's mind the 
crude brick rooms which are still standing, or even the dis- 



THE LABYRINTH AND LAKE MCERIS 223 

coveries of Lepsius, now covered with sand, with all this 
splendour and magnificence, of which more important 
vestiges must still remain to reward the labours of the 
explorer. ^ 



THE TOMBS OF BENI-HASSAN 

W. J. LOFTIE 

MANY travellers neglect to visit the grottoes on 
the vfzy up the river, hoping on the vv^ay down 
to have more time, yet in truth, when you are 
within a few days' sail of Cairo, after perhaps three months' 
absence, you are very unwilling to stop even to see these 
wonderful tombs/ 

It is most important to remember their date. The 
Twelfth Dynasty reigned during a period of comparative — 
nay, absolute, — civilization, between two long periods of 
confusion and barbarism. It was under them that the 
family of Nomarch of Sah made these tombs. They were 
all made by the one family — though there are some thirty- 
five of them. The first is that of Amenemhat, who died 
in the thirty-fourth year of Osirtasen I. The second is 

1 The journey from Abou-Kerkas station to the rock tombs takes about 
two hours. The river, which is crossed in the usual Nile ferry-boat, is 
about half an hour away, and after leaving the modern Beni-Hassan 
village, one passes along the edge of the desert striking sharply up-hill 
and arriving at length at a rocky terrace. Cut into the hillside can be 
seen the entrances to the thirty-nine tombs, a long line of doorways 
facing the river. These are in varying degrees of preservation. They 
were probably excavated in the time of the Usertsens of the Twelfth 
Dynasty, and they are covered with wall-paintings that give, with vivid 
accuracy, the life of 4,500 years ago. — Egypt and How to See It (London, 
1910). 



THE TOMBS OF BENI-HASSAN 225 

that of his grandson Nehera, whose father, Noom Hotep, 
had married Beict, the daughter of Amenemhat. This lady 
seems to have been of an energetic character, for she went 
to court and obtained from Amenemhat II., then in the 
nineteenth year of his reign, the governorship of the prov- 
ince her father had enjoyed. All this, and more of the 
same sort, is inscribed in the rapidly perishing characters 
on the walls of Nehera's tomb ; and though he honours his 
mother by narrating what she did for him with the king, he 
adds a line recording his veneration for his father, and his 
satisfaction at having been able to render his name illustrious. 

In these tombs we find the names of more gods than in 
the tombs of the earlier dynasties, but as yet no repre- 
sentations of them. Amenemhat dedicates the north post 
of his door to Osiris of Abood; the south, to Anubis of 
Ssoot ; and within, mention is made of Noom or Chnum 
of Ha-ver, and of Tater and Hor of Heben-nu. Thus 
we see that every god was more or less to be described as a 
local fetish. 

The three figures seated at the back of the tomb are not 
gods, but represent Amenemhat and his two wives. His 
life is written on the inner side of the door. The name of 
the tomb itself was " As." 

The greatest interest, of course, is excited by those 
tombs which have pillars closely resembling what was 
known some thousands of years later as Doric. The first 
caves you come to show the best examples of a style of 
which a contemporary example will be seen again at 



226 EGYPT 

Karnak. Here they are cut out of the rock, and form 
entrances to deep chambers of which the tomb of Amenem- 
hat is the finest. This gentleman — for evidently he was a 
gentleman by birth, position, education, tastes and attain- 
ments — made the most elaborate preparations for his own 
sepulchre ; and could we but feel sure that he was ever 
buried in his rock-cut monument, or that he was never 
dug up again by some anteeka-seekmg Arab, it would, 
perhaps, increase the pleasure with which we contemplate 
the decorations he has spent on wall and roof; and the 
delicate eye for form as well as for colour, which enabled 
him in the reign of Osirtasen I. to anticipate the design, 
which should, two thousand six hundred years at least 
later, be adopted for the chief feature of the most perfect 
building in the world. The two sixteen-sided columns 
which support the roof of the porch and the four within 
the chamber, have all the characteristics of the Doric. 
They resemble almost exactly, in fact, the well-known 
columns of the temples at Paestum, near Naples ; they 
have their flutings and their abacus; the height is sixteen 
feet and the diameter five ; the pillar duly tapers towards 
the top, and it grows out of the floor below without a base. 
There are people who assert that the Greek column was 
devised without any reference to these Egyptian prototypes, 
which would be harder to believe were it not that a little 
further on in another tomb we find a column which is, 
if possible, more beautiful than the Doric, and which was 
never imitated anywhere, although it also occurs at 



THE TOMBS OF BENI-HASSAN 227 

Karnak. The shafts are formed of slender reeds coupled 
at intervals, and expanding a little above a fillet near the 
top, to contract once more just as the roof is touched. 
It is possible that the Egyptians made these graceful 
columns from actual examples in their ovi^n houses of 
caves supporting a wooden roof, while the others imitated 
timber pillars, and that in Greece, where the reed is shaken 
by the wind, only the pillar which represented stability 
found favour. 

After all, the columns are only a part, and a small one 
of the show at Beni-Hassan. The pictures on the walls 
have been often described. They form the staple subject 
of illustrations in all the books on Egypt. They have 
one great advantage, too, over what the traveller afterwards 
visits at Thebes ; they may be seen in broad daylight, 
without any trouble in lighting candles, or aluminum wire, 
and without any crawling on all fours through dark pas- 
sages infested with Arabs and Arab parasites. 



ABYDOS 

AUGUSTE MAR LETT E BEY 

AT Abydos are to be seen the Temple of Seti, the 
Temple of Rameses, the Tomb of Osiris and the 
Necropolis. 
The temple of Seti is the first temple which is visited 
in Upper Egypt. The king who founded the temple is in 
the presence of one or more divinities : such is, nine times 
out of ten, the motif of each one of the pictures which 
form the decoration of the temple. The temple of Seti 
is the Memnonium of Strabo, deservedly famous for the 
magnificence of its sculptures. It was founded by Seti I., 
the father of Rameses II. All that bears the name of this 
prince is remarkable for the artistic manner of its treat- 
ment ; while on the contrary the sculptures of Rameses are 
poor, and too often of a most indifferent workmanship. 
The temple of Seti, moreover, is one of the edifices of 
Egypt the purport and meaning of which are most difficult 
to grasp. Properly speaking, it is composed of seven naves 
or bays, leading into seven sanctuaries, as if dedicated to 
seven different deities. The southernmost aisle, which is 
joined on in such an irregular manner to the principal 
building, constitutes another problem difficult of solution. 
Then again, both its founders, the kings Seti and Rameses, 
are represented in company one with the other in such a 



ABYDOS 229 

fashion that we must inevitably conclude that these two 
kings reigned conjointly j or, in other terms, that the 
temple was in course of construction when the father 
associated his son with him on the throne. By way of 
information, we may add that it was in the temple of Seti 
that we discovered a chronological table of kings, more 
complete and in a better state of preservation than that 
which has enriched the collection of the British Museum. 
Seti as king, and Rameses still as a prince, are there 
represented standing; the one offering the sacrifice of fire, 
the other reciting the sacred hymn. Before them, as a sort 
of synoptical diagram, are the cartouches of the seventy- 
six kings (Seti has included himself among the number) 
to whom this homage is paid, and it is not without a certain 
emotion that one reads at the head of the proud list the 
name of Menes, the ancient and venerable founder of the 
Egyptian monarchy. 

A little to the north of the temple of Seti is that of 
Rameses II. Of the latter, however, nothing remains but 
the walls to a height of scarcely five feet ; nor have the 
excavations that have been carried on here enabled us to 
draw out a complete plan of this temple, from which the 
" Tablet of Abydos " at the British Museum was carried 
away — a mutilated copy of the table we found entire in the 
temple of Seti. It is easily understood that a temple so 
completely devastated as the one we are at present con- 
templating should throw but little light on the question of 
mythology. But the question of origin is by no means 



230 EGYPT 

so obscure, and we know for certain that the temple of 
Rameses II. is contemporary with the Paris obelisk, that is 
to say, it was begun by Rameses II. when he was associated 
with his father on the throne, and was completed by him 
after he had become sole monarch. 

Still proceeding towards the north, we come upon a large 
encircling wall of crude brick. This is the ancient site of 
Thinis, the cradle of the Egyptian monarchy j here also 
stood the tomb of the Osiris of Abydos, which was to the 
inhabitants of Egypt what the Holy Sepulchre is to the 
Christians. Unfortunately there now remains absolutely 
nothing of Egypt's most ancient and most venerated 
sanctuary, nor is there the faintest hope that even the 
foundations will ever be brought to light by any fresh 
excavations. Close by, however, and also comprised 
within the enceinte^ is a tumulus, from which one is 
justified in expecting great results. This is the Kom-es- 
Sultan. This is not a natural mound ; it is the result of 
the constant accumulation of tombs which have thus been 
heaped up one over the other, through successive genera- 
tions. According to Plutarch, the wealthy inhabitants were 
brought from all parts of Egypt to be interred at Abydos, 
in order that they might repose close to Osiris. In all 
probability, the tombs of Kom-es-SuItan belong to the 
personages of whom Plutarch speaks. The only interest 
that this tumulus possesses is that there can be no doubt 
that the famous tomb of Osiris is not far ofF, and certain 
indications would lead one to believe that it is hollowed out 



ABYDOS 231 

of the selfsame rock which serves as the basis of this 
mound, so that the personages interred there repose as near 
as possible to the last resting-place of their beloved Osiris. 
The excavations at Kom-es-Sultan have therefore a double 
interest : they may furnish us with valuable tombs which 
become more and more ancient the further we penetrate 
into the sides of the mountain, so that it is not unreasonable 
to hope that in time we may come upon some belonging 
even to the First Dynasty. In the second place, they may 
any day lead us to the discovery of the still unknown 
entrance of the divine tomb, if indeed it were ever a sub- 
terranean vault. As for the necropolis itself, however 
much interest it may have afforded during our excavations 
(and it furnished the greater part of the valuable collection 
of stelae which is to be seen at the Boulac Museum, its ap- 
pearance has been so entirely changed by those excavations, 
that it has lost much of its attraction for the ordinary 
traveller. Let us state, in conclusion, that the tombs of 
the acropolis of Abydos belong principally to the Sixth 
Dynasty (3700 b. c), to the Twelfth Dynasty (3000 b. c), 
and to the Thirteenth Dynasty (2800 b. c). We may 
further notice that the greater number of the tombs of the 
Thirteenth Dynasty consist of pyramids economically 
built of crude bricks, the interior being hollowed out in the 
form of a cupola ; and again, that it is not at all unusual, 
among the tombs of this period, as also of the Sixth Dynasty, 
to find vaulted roofs which take the form of a pointed arch, and 
where, moreover, the bricks of the ogive are wedge-shaped. 



THEBES AND KARNAK 

AMELIA B. EDWARDS 



I 



"^HEBES, I need scarcely say, was built like London 
on both sides of the river. The original extent 
must have been very great ; but its public buildings, 
its quays, its thousands of private dwellings are gone and have 
left ^cw traces. The secular city which was built of crude 
brick, is represented by a few insignificant mounds; while 
of the sacred edifices, five large groups of limestone ruins — 
three on the western bank and two on the eastern, together 
with the remains of several small temples and a vast multi- 
tude of tombs — are all that remain in permanent evidence of 
its ancient splendour. Luxor is a modern Arab village, oc- 
cupying the site of one of the oldest of these five ruins. It 
stands on the eastern bank, close against the river, about 
two miles south of Karnak and nearly opposite the famous 
sitting Colossi of the western plains. On the opposite 
bank lie Gournah, the Ramesseum and Medinet-Habu. A 
glance at the map will do more than pages of explanation to 
show the relative position of these ruins. The Temple of 
Gournah, it will be seen, is almost vis-a-vis of Karnak. 
The Ramesseum faces about half-way between Karnak and 
Luxor. Medinet-Habu is placed farther to the south than 
any building on the eastern side of the river. Behind these 




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THEBES AND KARNAK 233 

three western groups, reaching far and wide along the edge 
of the Libyan range, lies the great Theban Necropolis ; 
while farther back still, in the radiating valleys on the other 
side of the mountains, are found the Tombs of the Kings. 
The distance between Karnak and Luxor is a little less 
than two miles ; while from Medinet-Habu to the Temple 
of Gournah may be roughly guessed at something under 
four. We have here, therefore, some indication of the ex- 
tent, though not of the limits of the ancient city. 

Luxor is a large village, inhabited by a mixed population 
of Copts and Arabs, and doing a smart trade in antiquities. 
The temple has here formed the nucleus of the village, the 
older part of which has grown up in and about the ruins. 
The grand entrance faces north, looking down towards 
Karnak. The twin towers of the great propylon, dilapidated 
as they are, stripped of their cornices, encumbered with 
debrisj are magnificent still. In front of them, one on each 
side of the central gateway, sit two helmeted Colossi, bat- 
tered and featureless, and buried to the chin, like two of 
the Proud in the doleful Fifth Circle. A few yards in front 
of these again stands a solitary obelisk, also half buried. 
The Colossi are of black granite ; the obelisk is of red, 
highly polished, and covered on all four sides with superb 
hieroglyphs in three vertical columns. These hieroglyphs 
are engraved with the precision of the finest gem. They 
are cut to a depth of about two inches in the outer 
columns and five inches in the central column of the in- 
scription. The true height of this wonderful monolith is 



234 EGYPT 

over seventy feet, betvi^een thirty and forty of which are 
hidden under the accumulated soil of many centuries. Its 
companion obelisk, already scaling away by imperceptible 
degrees under the skyey influences of an alien climate, looks 
down with melancholy indifference upon the petty revolu- 
tions and counter-revolutions of the Place de la Concorde. 
On a line with the two black Colossi, but some fifty feet or 
so farther to the west, rises a third and somewhat smaller 
head of chert or limestone, the fellow to which is doubtless 
hidden among the huts that encroach half-way across the 
face of the eastern tower. The whole outer surface of 
these towers is covered with elaborate sculptures of gods 
and men, horses and chariots, the pageantry of triumph 
and the carnage of war. The King in his chariot draws 
his terrible bow, or slays his enemies on foot, or sits 
enthroned receiving the homage of his court. Whole regi- 
ments armed with lance and shield march across the scene. 
The foe flies in disorder. The King, attended by his fan- 
bearers, returns in state, and the priests burn incense before 
him. 

The King is Rameses the Second, called Sesostris and 
Osymandias by ancient writers, and best known to history 
as Rameses the Great. His actual names and titles as they 
stand upon the monuments are Ra-user-ma Sotp-en-Ra 
Ra-messu Mer-Amen ; that is to say, " Ra strong in 
Truth, Approved of Ra, Son of Ra, Beloved of Amen." 

The mutilated Colossi are portrait statues of the con- 
queror. The obelisk, in the pompous style of Egyptian 



THEBES AND KARNAK 235 

dedications, proclaims that " The Lord of the World, 
Guardian-Sun of Truth, approved of Ra, has built this 
edifice in honour of his Father, Amen-Ra, and has erected 
to him these two great obelisks of stone in face of the 
house of Rameses in the city of Amnion." 

So stately was the approach made by Rameses the Great 
to the temple founded about a hundred and fifty years be- 
fore his time by Amenhotep III. He also built the court- 
yard upon which this pylon opened, joining it to the older 
part of the building in such wise that the original first court 
became now the second court, while next in order came 
the portico, the hall of assembly and the sanctuary. By 
and by, when the long line of Rameses had passed away, 
other and later kings put their hands to the work. The 
names of Shabaka (Sabaco), of Ptolemy Philopater, and of 
Alexander the younger, appear among the later inscriptions ; 
while those of Amenhotep IV. (Khu-en-Aten), Horem- 
heb and Seti, the father of Rameses the Great, are found 
in the earlier parts of the building. It was in this way that 
an Egyptian temple grew from age to age, owing a colonnade 
to this king and a pylon to that, till it came in time to rep- 
resent the styles of many periods. 

If the whole building could be transported bodily to some 
point between Memphis and Siut, where the river is bare of 
ruins, it would be enthusiastically visited. Here it is 
eclipsed by the wonders of Karnak and the western bank, 
and is undeservedly neglected. 

In the afternoon we took donkeys and rode out to 



236 EGYPT 

Karnak across a wide plain, barren and hillocky in some 
parts J overgrown in others with coarse halfeh grass ; and 
dotted here and there with clumps of palms. At every rise 
in the ground we saw the huge propylons towering higher 
above the palms. Once, but only for a few moments, there 
came into sight a confused and wide-spread mass of ruins 
as extensive apparently as the ruins of a large town. Then 
our way dipped into a sandy groove bordered by mud-walls 
and plantations of dwarf-palms. All at once this groove 
widened, became a stately avenue guarded by a double file 
of shattered sphinxes, and led towards a lofty pylon standing 
up alone against the sky. 

Close beside this grand gateway, as if growing there on 
purpose, rose a thicket of sycamores and palms; while be- 
yond it were seen the twin pylons of a Temple. The 
sphinxes were colossal, and measured about ten feet in 
length. One or two were ram-headed. Of the rest — 
some forty or fifty in number — all were headless, some split 
asunder, some overturned, others so mutilated that they 
looked like torrent-worn boulders. This avenue once 
reached from Luxor to Karnak. Taking into account the 
distance (which is just two miles from Temple to Temple) 
and the short intervals at which the sphinxes are placed, 
there cannot originally have been fewer than five hundred 
of them ; that is to say two hundred and fifty on each side 
of the road. 

Dismounting for a few minutes we went into the Temple ; 
glanced round the open courtyard with its colonnade of 



THEBES AND KARNAK 237 

pillars ; peeped hurriedly into some ruinous side-chambers j 
and then rode on. Our books told us that we had seen the 
small Temple of Rameses the Third. It would have been 
called large anywhere but at Karnak. 

Leaving the small Temple, we turned towards the river, 
skirted the mud-walls of the native village and approached 
the Great Temple by way of its main entrance. Here we 
entered upon what had once been another great avenue of 
sphinxes, ram-headed, couchant on plinths deep cut with 
hieroglyphic legends, and leading up from some great land- 
ing-place beside the Nile. 

And now the towers that we had first seen as we sailed 
by in the glittering of the sun, and relieved in creamy light 
against blue depths of sky. One was nearly perfect ; the 
other, shattered as if by the shock of an earthquake, was 
still so loftly that an Arab clambering from block to block 
midway of its vast height looked no bigger than a squirrel. 

On the threshold of this tremendous portal we again dis- 
mounted. Shapeless crude brick mounds, marking the 
limits of the ancient wall of circuit, reached far away on 
either side. An immense perspective of pillars and pylons 
leading up to a very distant obelisk opened out before us. 
We went in, the great walls towering up like cliffs above 
our heads, and entered the First Court. Here, in the midst 
of a large quadrangle open to the sky, stands a solitary 
column, the last of a central avenue of twelve, some of 
which, disjointed by the shock, lie just as they fell, like 
skeletons of vetebrate monsters left stranded by the Flood. 



238 EGYPT 

Crossing the Court in the glowing sunlight, we came to 
a mighty doorway between two more propylons — the door- 
way splendid with coloured bas-reliefs j the propylons mere 
cataracts of fallen blocks, piled up to the right and left in 
grand confusion. The cornice of the doorway is gone. 
Only a jutting fragment of the lintel-stone remains. That 
stone, when perfect, measured forty feet and ten inches 
across. The doorway must have been full a hundred feet in 
height. 

We went on. Leaving to the right a mutilated colossus 
engraven on arm and breast with the cartouche of Rameses 
II., we crossed the shade upon the threshold, and passed 
into the famous Hypostyle Hall of Seti the First. 

The Great Hall of Karnak is photographed in some dark 
corner of my brain as long as I have memory. I shut my 
eyes, and see it as if I were there — not all at once, as in a 
picture ; but bit by bit, as the eye takes note of large objects 
and travels over an extended field of vision. I stand once 
more among those mighty columns, which radiate into ave- 
nues from whatsoever point one takes them. I see them 
swathed in coiled shadows and broad bands of light. I see 
them sculptured and painted with shapes of Gods and 
Kings, with blazonings of royal names, with sacrificial 
altars, and forms of sacred beasts and emblems of wisdom 
and truth. The shafts of these columns are enormous. I 
stand at the foot of one — or what seems to be the foot ; for 
the original pavement lies buried seven feet below. Six 
men standing with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, 




)4 
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< 
t4 




THEBES AND KARNAK 239 

could barely span it round. It casts a shadow twelve feet 
in breadth — such a shadow as might be cast by a tower. 
The capital that juts out so high above my head looks as if 
it might have been placed there to support the heavens. It 
is carved in the semblance of a full-grown lotus, and glows 
with undying colours — colours that are still fresh, though 
laid on by hands that have been dust these three thousand 
years and more. It would take not six men, but a dozen 
to measure round the curved lip of that stupendous lily. 

Such are the twelve central columns. The rest (one 
hundred and twenty-two in number) are gigantic, too ; but 
smaller. Of the roof they once supported, only the beams 
remain. Those beams are stones — huge monoliths, carved 
and painted bridging the space from pillar to pillar, and 
patterning the trodden soil with bands of shadow. 

Looking up and down the central avenue, we see at the 
one end a flame-like obelisk ; at the other, a solitary palm 
against a background of glowing mountain. To right, to 
left, showing transversely through long files of columns, we 
catch glimpses of colossal bas-reliefs lining the roofless 
walls in every direction. The King, as usual, figures in 
every group and performs the customary acts of worship. 
The Gods receive and approve him. Half in light, half 
in shadow, these slender fantastic forms stand out sharp and 
clear and colourless ; each figure some eighteen or twenty 
feet in height. They could scarcely have looked more 
weird when the great roof was in its place and perpetual 
twilight reigned. But it is difficult to imagine the roof on, 



240 EGYPT 

and the sky shut out. It all looks right as it is ; and one 
feels, somehow, that such columns should have nothing be- 
tween them and the infinite blue depths of heaven. 

How often has it been written, and how often must it 
be repeated that the Great Hall of Karnak is the noblest 
architectural work ever designed and executed by human 
hands ? One writer tells us that it covers four times the 
area occupied by the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. 
Another measures it against St. Peter. All admit their in- 
ability to describe it ; yet all attempt the description. 
There is, in truth, no building in the wide world to com- 
pare with it. The Pyramids are more stupendous. The 
Colosseum covers more ground. The Parthenon is more 
beautiful. Yet in nobility of conception, in vastness of 
detail, in majesty of the highest order, the Hall of Pillars 
exceeds them, every one. This doorway, these columns, 
are the wonder of the world. How was that lintel-stone 
raised ? How were these capitals lifted ? Entering among 
those mighty pillars, says a recent observer, " you feel that 
you have shrunk to the dimensions and feebleness of a fly." 
But I think you feel more than that. You are stupefied by 
the thought of the mighty men who made them. You say 
to yourself: "There were indeed giants in those days." 



MEMNONIUM OR RAMESSEUM 

SIR I. GARDNER WILKINSON 

FOR symmetry of architecture and elegance of sculp- 
ture the Memnonium may vie with any other 
Egyptian monument. No traces are visible of the 
dromos that probably existed before the pyramidal towers 
which form the facade of its first area — a court whose 
breadth of i8o feet, exceeding the length by nearly thirteen 
yards, was reduced to a more just proportion by the intro- 
duction of a double avenue of columns on either side ex- 
tending from the towers to the north wall. In this area, 
on the right of a flight of steps leading to the next court 
was a stupendous Syenite statue of the king seated on a 
throne, in the usual attitude of Egyptian figures, the hands 
resting on the knees, indicative of that tranquillity which he 
had returned to enjoy in Egypt after the fatigues of victory. 
But the hand of the destroyer has levelled this monument 
of Egyptian grandeur, whose colossal fragments lie scat- 
tered round the pedestal ; and its shivered throne evinces 
the force used for its destruction. To say that this is the 
largest statue in Egypt will convey no idea of the gigantic 
size or enormous weight of a mass which exceeded when 



242 EGYPT 

entire nearly three times the solid contents of the great 
obelisk of Karnak and weighed about 887 tons. 

The second area is about 140 feet by 170, having on the 
south and north sides a row of Osiride pillars connected 
with each other by two lateral corridors of circular columns. 
Three flights of steps lead to the northern corridor behind 
the Osiride pillars, the centre one having on each side a 
black granite statue of Rameses II., the base of whose throne 
is cut to fit the talus of the ascent. 

Behind the columns of the northern corridor, and on 
either side of the central door of the great hall, is a lime- 
stone pedestal, which, to judge from the space left in the 
sculptures, must have once supported the sitting figure of a 
lion, or perhaps a statue of the king. Three entrances 
open into the grand hall, each with a sculptured doorway of 
black granite ; and, between the first two columns of the 
central avenue, two pedestals supported (one on either side) 
two other statues of the king. Twelve massive columns, 
thirty-two feet six inches high without the abacus, and 
twenty-one feet three inches in circumstance, form a double 
line along the centre of this hall, and eighteen of smaller 
dimensions (seventeen feet eight inches in circumference) 
to the right and left complete the total of the forty-eight, 
which supported its solid roof studded with stars on an 
azure ground. To the hall, which measures one hundred 
feet by one hundred and thirty-three, succeeded three 
central and six lateral chambers, indicating by a small flight 
of steps the gradual ascent of the rock on which the edifice 



MEMNONIUM OR RAMESSEUM 243 

is constructed. Of nine, two only of the central apart- 
ments now remain, each supported by four columns and 
each measuring about thirty feet by fifty-five; but the 
vestiges of their walls, and the appearance of the rock, 
which has been levelled to form an area around the ex- 
terior of the building, point out their original extent. The 
sculptures much more interesting than the architectural de- 
tails, have suffered much more from the hand of the des- 
troyer; and of the many curious battle scenes which 
adorned its walls, four only now remain ; though the traces 
of another may be perceived behind the granite colossus on 
the north face of the wall. 

On the north face of the eastern pyramidal tower or 
propylon is represented the capture of several towns from 
an Asiastic enemy, whose chiefs are led in bonds by the 
victorious Egyptians towards their camp. Several of these 
towns are introduced into the picture, each bearing its name 
in hieroglyphic characters, which state them to have been 
taken in the fourth year of King Rameses II. 

In the scene before us, an insolent soldier pulls the beard 
of his helpless captive, while others wantonly beat a sup- 
pliant; and the display is the more striking as the Egyptians 
on other occasions have recorded their humane treatment of 
an enemy in distress. 

Beyond these is a corps of infantry in close array, flanked 
by a strong body of chariots ; and a camp, indicated by a 
rampart of Egyptian shields, with a wicker gateway, guarded 
by four companies of sentries, who are on duty on the inner 



244 EGYPT 

side, forms the most interesting object in the picture. Here 
the booty taken from the enemy is collected ; oxen, chariots, 
plaustra, horses, asses, sacks of gold, represent the confusion 
incident after a battle. Below this a body of infantry 
marches homewards ; and beyond them the king, attended by 
his fan-bearers, holds forth his hand to receive the homage 
of the priests and principal persons, who approach his throne 
to congratulate his return. His charioteer is also in attend- 
ance, and the high-spirited horses of his car are with 
difficulty restrained by three grooms who hold them. Two 
captives below this are doomed to be beaten by four Egyp- 
tian soldiers ; while they in vain with outstretched hands im- 
plore the clemency of their heedless conqueror. 

The sculptures on the gateway refer to the panegyrics, or 
assemblies, of the king, to whom different divinities are said 
to " give life and power." Over this gate passes a staircase, 
leading to the top of the building, whose entrance lies on the 
exterior of the east side. 

Upon the west tower is represented a battle in which the 
king discharges his arrows on the broken lines and flying 
chariots of the enemy ; and his figure and car are again in- 
troduced on the upper part over the smaller sculptures. In 
a small compartment beyond these, which is formed by the 
end of the corridor of the area, he stands armed with a battle- 
axe about to slay the captives. In the next compartment, 
attended by his fan-bearers and still wearing his helmet, he 
approaches the temple. 

On the north face of the southeast wall of the next area 



MEMNONIUM OR RAMESSEUM 245 

is another historical subject representing Rameses II. pur- 
suing an enemy, whose numerous chariots, flying over the 
plain, endeavour to regain the river and seek shelter under 
the fortified walls of their city. 

Above this battle scene is a procession of priests, bearing 
the figures of the Theban ancestors of Rameses II. The 
first of these is Menes j then Manmoph ; and, after him, 
those of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The remaining sub- 
jects are similar to those in the coronation of the king at 
Medinet-Habu. 

Beyond the west staircase of the north corridor, the king 
kneels before Amunre, Maut, and Khons. Thoth notes on 
his palm-branch the years of the panegyrics ; and the gods 
Mandoo and Atmoo introduce Rameses into the presence of 
the triad of deities. 

On the other side, forming the south wall of the great 
hall, is a small but interesting battle, where the use of the 
ladder and of the testudo throws considerable light on the 
mode of warfare of that early period. 

One of the architraves presents a long inscription pur- 
porting that Amunmai Rameses has made the sculptures 
for his father Amunre, king of the gods. At the upper end 
of the hall, on the northwest wall, the king receives the 
falchion and sceptres from Amunre, who is attended by the 
goddess Maut ; and in the hieroglyphics mention is made of 
this palace of Rameses, of which the deity is said to be the 
guardian. We also learn from them that the king is to 
smite the heads of his foreign enemies with the former, and 



246 EGYPT 

with the latter to defend or rule his country, Egypt. On 
the corresponding wall, he receives the emblems of life and 
power from Amunre, attended by Khons, in the presence of 
the lion-headed goddess. Below these compartments on 
either wall, is a procession of the twenty-three sons of the 
king ; and on the west corner are three of his daughters, but 
without their names. 

On the ceiling of the next chamber is an astronomical 
subject. On the walls are sculptured sacred arks, borne in 
procession by the priests ; and at the base of the door lead- 
ing to the next apartment is an inscription purporting that 
the king had dedicated it to Amun, and mention seems to be 
made of its being beautiful with gold and precious orna- 
ments. The door itself was of two folds, turning on bronze 
pins, which moved in circular grooves of the same metal, 
since removed from the stones in which they were fixed. 
On the north wall of the next and last room that now re- 
mains, the king is making offerings and burning incense, on 
one side to Ptah and the lion-headed goddess ; on the other 
to Re (the sun) whose figure is gone. Large tablets before 
him mention the offerings he has made to different deities. 



THE TWO COLOSSI 

SIR I. GARDNER WILKINSON 

THE easternmost of the two sitting colossi was once 
the wonder of the ancients. It has also been a 
subject of controversy among modern writers ; 
some of whom notwithstanding the numerous inscriptions 
which decide it to have been the vocal Memnon of the 
Romans have thought fit to doubt its being the very statue 
said by ancient authors to utter a sound at the rising of the 
sun. 

Strabo, who visited it with ^lius Gallus, the governor 
of Egypt, confesses that he heard the sound but could " not 
affirm whether it proceeded from the pedestal or from the 
statue itself, or even from some of those who stood near its 
base ; " and it appears, from his not mentioning the name 
of Memnon, that it was not yet supposed to be the statue of 
that doubtful personage. But it was not long before the 
Roman visitors ascribed it to the " Son of Tithonius," and 
a multitude of inscriptions testified his miraculous powers, 
and the credulity of the writers. 

Previous to Strabo's time, the " upper part of this statue, 
above the throne, had been broken and hurled down," as 
he was told " by the shock of an earthquake " ; nor do the 
repairs afterwards made to it appear to date prior to the 



248 EGYPT 

time of Juvenal, since the poet thus refers to its fractured 
condition : 

Dimidio, magicae resonant ubi Memnone chordae. 

But from the account in the ApoUonius Thyaneus of 
Philostratus we might conclude that the statue had been 
already repaired as early as the age of Juvenal, v^ho was 
also a cotemporary of the emperor Domitian ; since Damis, 
the companion of the philosopher, asserts that the " sound 
was uttered when the sun touched its lips^ But the 
license of poetry and the fictions of Damis render both 
authorities of little weight in deciding this point. It has 
been conjectured that it was thrown down by the earth- 
quake of B. c. 27, as Eusebius attributes to that cause the 
destruction of the monuments of Thebes. 

The foot was also broken and repaired, but if at the 
same time as the upper part, the epoch of its restoration 
must date after the time of Adrian, or at the close of his 
reign, as the inscription on the left foot has been cut 
through to admit the cramp which united the restored part. 

Pliny, following the opinion then in vogue, calls it the 
statue of Memnon, and adds that it was erected before the 
temple of Serapis — a mistake, sufficiently proved by the 
fact of the temple having been dedicated to Amun ; which 
will not permit us to suppose that he had substituted the 
name of Serapis for Osiris. 

The nature of the stone, which was also supposed to 
ofFer some difficulty, is a coarse hard gritstone, " spotted,'* 




I 
z 




THE TWO COLOSSI 249 

according to Tzetzes' expression, with numerous chalce- 
donies, and here and there covered with black and red 
oxide of iron. The height of either Colossus is forty- 
seven feet, or fifty-three above the plain with the pedestal, 
which, now buried from six feet ten inches to seven feet 
below the surface, completes, to its base, a total of sixty. 
The repairs of the vocal statue are of blocks of sandstone, 
placed horizontally, in five layers, and forming the body, 
head, and upper part of the arms ; but the line of hiero- 
glyphics at the back has not been completed, nor is there 
any inscription to announce the era or name of its restorer. 
The researches of Pococke and Hamilton have long since 
satisfactorily proved this to be the Memnon of the ancients ; 
who, we learn by an inscription on the left foot, was sup- 
posed also to bear the name of Phamenoth (Amunothph). 
The destruction of the upper part has been attributed to 
Cambyses by some ancient authors. 

The sound it uttered was said to resemble the breaking 
of a harp string, or, according to the preferable authority of 
a witness, to be a metallic ring ; and the memory of its 
daily performance, about the first or second hour after sun- 
rise, is still retained in the traditional appellation of Salamat^ 
" Salutations," by the modern inhabitants of Thebes. 

In the lap of the statue is a stone, which, on being 
struck, emits a metallic sound that might still be made use 
of to deceive a visitor who was predisposed to believe its 
powers; and from its position, and the squared space cut 
in the block behind, as if to admit a person who might thus 



250 EGYPT 

lie concealed from the most scrutinous observer in the 
plain below, it seems to have been used after the restoration 
of the statue. 

The proportions of the colossi are about the same as of 
the granite statue of Rameses II. ; but they are inferior in 
the weight and hardness of their materials. They measure 
about eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders ; 
sixteen feet six inches from the top of the shoulder to the 
elbow ; ten feet six inches from the top of the head to the 
shoulder ; seventeen feet nine inches from the elbow to the 
finger's end ; and nineteen feet eight inches from the knee 
to the plant of the foot. The thrones are ornamented with 
figures of the god Nilus, who holding the stalks of two 
plants peculiar to the river is engaged in binding up a 
pedestal or table surmounted by the name of the Egyptian 
monarch — a symbolical group, indicating his dominion over 
the upper and lower countries. A line of hieroglyphics 
extends perpendicularly down the back, from the shoulder 
to the pedestal, containing the name of the Pharaoh they 
represent. 



THE TWO COLOSSI 

DEAN STAN LET 

NO written account has given me an adequate im- 
pression of the effect, past and present, of the 
colossal figures of the kings. What spires are 
to a modern city, what the towers of a cathedral are to its 
nave and choir, that the statues of the Pharaohs were to 
the streets and temples of Thebes. The ground is strewed 
with their fragments ; there were avenues of them tower- 
ing high above plain and houses. Three of gigantic size 
still remain. One was the granite statue of Rameses him- 
self, who sat on the right side of the entrance to his palace. 
By some extraordinary catastrophe, the statue has been 
thrown down, and the Arabs have scooped their millstones 
out of his face, but you can still see what he was — the 
largest statue in the world. Far and wide that enormous 
head must have been seen, eyes, mouth and ears. Far and 
wide you must have seen his vast hands resting on his 
elephantine knees. You sit on his breast and look at the 
Osiride statues which support the portico of the temple, 
and which anywhere else would put to shame even the 
statues of the cherubs in St. Peter's — and they seem 
pigmies before him. His arm is thicker than their whole 
bodies. The only part of the temple or palace at all in 



252 EGYPT 

proportion to him must have been the gateway, which rose 
in pyramidal towers, now broken down, and rolling in a 
wild ruin down to the plain. 

Nothing which now exists in the world can give any 
notion of what the effect must have been when he was 
erect. Nero towering above the Colosseum may have been 
something like it i but he was of bronze and Rameses was 
of solid granite. Nero was standing without any object ; 
Rameses was resting in awful majesty after the conquest of 
the then known world. No one who entered that building, 
whether it were temple or palace, could have thought of 
anything else but that stupendous being who thus had raised 
himself up above the whole world of gods and men. 

And when from the statue you descend to the palace, the 
same impression is kept up. It is the earliest instance of 
the enshrinement in Art of the historical glories of a nation, 
such as Versailles. Everywhere the King is conquering, 
worshipping, ruling. The Palace is the Temple — the King 
is Priest. But everywhere the same colossal proportions 
are preserved. He and his horses are ten times the size of 
the rest of the army. Alike in battle and in worship, he is 
of the same stature as the gods themselves. Most striking 
is the familiar gentleness with which — one on each side — 
they take him by the hand, as one of their own order, and 
then in the next compartment introduce him to Ammon, 
and the lion-headed goddess. Every distinction, except of 
degree, between divinity and royalty, is entirely levelled, 
and the royal majesty is always represented by making the 



THE TWO COLOSSI 253 

king, not like Saul or Agamemnon, from the head and 
shoulders, but from the foot and ankle upwards, higher than 
the rest of the people. 

The sun was setting ; the African range glowed red be- 
hind them ; the green plain was dyed with a deeper green 
beneath them ; and the shades of evening veiled the vast 
rents and fissures in their aged frames. They, too, sit 
hands on knees, and they too are sixty feet high. As I 
looked back at them in the sunset, and they rose up in front 
of the background of the mountain, they seemed, indeed, as 
if they were part of it, — as if they belonged to some natural 
creation rather than to any work of art. And yet, as I have 
said, when anywhere in their neighbourhood, the human 
character is never lost. Their faces are dreadfully muti- 
lated ; indeed, the largest has no face at all, but is from the 
waist upwards a mass of stones or rocks piled together in 
the form of a human head or body. Still, especially in that 
dim light, and from their lofty throne, they seem to have 
faces, only of hideous and grinning ugliness. 

It carries one back to the days when " there were giants 
on the earth." It shows how the king was the visible God 
upon earth. The only thing like it that has since been 
seen is the deification of the Roman emperors. 

And now let us pass on to the two others. They are the 
only statues remaining of an avenue of eighteen similar, or 
nearly similar statues, some of whose remnants lie in the 
field behind them which led to the palace of Amenophis III., 
every one of the statues being Amenophis himself, thus 



254 EGYPT 

giving in multiplication what Rameses gained in solitary 
elevation. He lived some reigns earlier than Rameses, and 
the statues are of ruder workmanship and coarser stone. 
To me they were much more striking close at hand when 
their human forms were distinctly visible, than at a distance, 
when they looked only like two towers or landmarks. 

And now, who was it that strewed the plain with their 
countless fragments ? Who had power to throw down the 
Colossus of Rameses ? Who broke the statue of Ameno- 
phis from the middle upwards ? From the time of the 
Roman travellers, who have carved their names in verses 
innumerable on the foot of Amenophis, there has been but 
one answer — Cambyses. He was, in the traditions of that 
time, the Cromwell of Egypt. It is possible that Rameses 
and Amenophis were shattered by earthquakes. But the 
recollection of Cambyses shows the feeling he had left while 
here as the great Iconoclast. What an effort this implies 
of fanatical or religious zeal ! What an impression it gives 
of that Persian hatred of idols which is described in the 
Bible, only here carried to excess against these majestic 
kings : " Bel boweth down and Nebo stoopeth." Well 
might the idols of Babylon tremble before Cyrus, if such 
was the fate of the Egyptian Pharaohs before Cambyses. 



DEIR-EL-BAHARI 

JUGUSTE MARIETTE-BET 

THE temple of Deir-el-Bahari ' occupies the centre 
of the semicircle which encloses El-Assassif. It 
lies close against some fine perpendicular rocks, 
which, on the opposite or northwestern side, run down into 
the valley of Bab-el-Moulouk. There can be little doubt 
as to the origin of this temple. Deir-el-Bahari was raised 
to the glory of Queen Hatasou just as Medinet-Habu was 
raised to the glory of Rameses III. The site of these com- 
memorative temples was chosen from religious motives pe- 
culiar to Egypt, to which there is no need again to allude. 
The walls of Deir-el-Bahari are covered with cartouches 
which at first sight are calculated to cause a certain confu- 
sion in the visitor's mind. The fact is Hatasou took to 
herself different names according as she either shared the 
throne with her two brothers Thothmes II. and Thothmes 
III., or as she subsequently governed with the title of 
Regent in the name of the latter of these two princes, or 

1 This, one of the most extraordinary of all Egyptian temples, was 
never finished. The Egyptians called it Zoserzosru (most splendid of 
all), and the Arabs, Dir-el- Bahari (Northern Convent) to describe a 
community of Christian monks v/ho made the temple their headquarters. 
Mariette made some explorations here ; and in 1 894- 1 896 the whole 
temple was exhumed by the Egypt Exploration Fund. 



256 EGYPT 

again, as she eventually reigned alone in her own name. 
Science has not yet, we think, said its last word on the sub- 
ject of these different names, and perhaps the solution of 
the problem may be found in some inscriptions lately 
brought to light in the temple we are now examining. 

Deir-el-Bahari was constructed on a singular plan, and 
even from a distance it bears no resemblance to any of the 
other temples of Egypt. It was preceded by a long alley 
of sphinxes, now utterly destroyed, and by two obelisks of 
which nothing at present remains but the base. Beyond 
these, it stretched out in terraces as far as the mountain, 
one court leading up to another by easy ascents. It was 
built of a fine white limestone, and one might well wonder 
that a single block of wall should remain standing, if one 
did not remember that El-Assassif, by the abundance of its 
materials and its proximity to the plain, offered to the 
enterprising plunderer much greater facilities of spoil than 
could be obtained at Deir-el-Bahari. Moreover, it is 
probable that this temple was soon abandoned. Even as 
early as the Twenty-second Dynasty it was already used 
as a cemetery, and in one of its chambers were found, 
piled up one above the other almost to the ceiling, mummies 
of the Grecian period, lying over rows of other mummies, 
of which the most ancient probably belonged to the Twenty- 
sixth Dynasty. 

History is not forgotten at Deir-el-Bahari any more than 
at the Ramesseum and at Medinet-Habu. But it is no 
easy matter to determine whether the fragments of pictures 



DEIR-EL-BAHARI 257 

one meets with scattered here and there form part of any 
one common theme. Reaching the temple from the east, 
that is nearly at its lowest partj we come upon the first of 
these bas-reliefs. Troops are marching, preceded by 
trumpets and officers j the soldiers are fully equipped, some 
carrying in their hands branches of palm trees ; their 
standards are surmounted by the cartouches of Hatasou. 
Evidently we have before our eyes the triumphal entry of 
troops returning from a campaign. Further on, almost at 
the extremity of the temple, and only a few steps from the 
granite gateway which forms so conspicuous an object 
from all parts of the surrounding plain, is another picture 
somewhat more distinct ; but unfortunately only the final 
portion remains. Hatasou had sent her troops on a cam- 
paign into Arabia, a country celebrated for its perfumes, 
its spice-bearing and odoriferous trees, its gold, its ebony, 
and its wrought fabrics of every sort. This expedition 
was to lay in a stock of such treasures as it could collect 
together, and to bring them back to Thebes to be stored in 
the temple of Ammon. No obstacle, it would seem, 
checked the progress of the detachment sent for this pur- 
pose to the shores of the Red Sea. The principal in- 
habitants of the country embarked more or less willingly 
on the Egyptian fleet to lay at the feet of the magnificent 
Regent substantial proofs of their submission. Such are 
the principal episodes of that campaign as described in the 
bas-reliefs of Deir-el-Bahari. The scene is laid on the 
seashore, the transparency of the water naively allowing 



258 EGYPT 

the fishes to be perceived. Some Egyptian soldiers are 
drawn up on the coast. The inhabitants of the Punt 
country quit their dwellings, whose white roofs have the 
form of a cupola, and bring the produce of the soil and 
of their industry. Some are piling up the scented gum 
into enormous heaps, others bring entire trees, the roots 
of which are tied up in couffes or frail baskets. The 
clothing of these individuals, their weapons and the colour 
of their skins deserve especial study. The Egyptian fleet 
is drawn up close by, and the loading of the ships is being 
proceeded with. Bales of goods, earthen jars, live animals, 
trees — everything is carefully arranged in its appointed 
place. The ships are propelled both by sail and by oars. 
Thebes at last is reached, and the different items are 
enumerated. There is quite a procession of cynocephalous 
monkeys, panthers, giraffes, and short-horned oxen ; while 
collars, chains, bracelets, daggers and hatchets are all being 
classed in order. Ammon is witness of the scene, and 
addresses his congratulations to the Queen Regent. In a 
side chamber to the south, another subject is presented. 
We have now no longer the green waters of the Red Sea, 
but the blue waters of the Nile. In the lowest compart- 
ment of the picture, more troops are seen marching. But 
interesting as they are, one cannot be sure whether these 
episodes refer to the same campaign which has been so 
minutely described on the walls of the principal chamber. 
Close by, a fine doorway, with many ruins heaped up 
before it, leads into a chamber, the colours of which have 



DEIR-EL-BAHARI 259 

retained all their vividness. On each side of the passage 
leading to this chamber, an admirable sculpture represents 
a royal personage, w^ho quenches his thirst vi'ith the milk 
of Hathor under the form of the most beautiful cow that 
Egyptian bas-reliefs can show us. 



TOMBS OF THE KINGS 

DEAN STANLEY 



A ■ ^HE western barrier of the Theban plain is a mass 
1 of high limestone cliffs, with two deep gorges : 
one running up behind the plain, and into the 
very heart of the hills, entirely shut in by them ; the 
other running up from the plain, so as to be enclosed 
within the hills, but having its face open to the city. The 
former is the valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the West- 
minster Abbey of Thebes ; the latter, of the Tombs of the 
Priests and Princes, its Canterbury Cathedral. 

Ascend, therefore, the first of these two gorges. It is 
the very ideal of desolation. Bare rocks, without a par- 
ticle of vegetation, overhanging and enclosing in a still 
narrower and narrower embrace, a valley as rocky and 
bare as themselves, with no human habitation visible, the 
whole stir of the city wholly excluded j such is, such 
always must have been the awful resting-place of the 
Theban kings. 

Nothing that has ever been said about them had prepared 
me for their extraordinary grandeur. You enter a sepulchral 
portal in the face of these wild cliffs, and find yourself in 
a long and lofty gallery, opening or narrowing, as the case 
may be, into successive halls and chambers, all of which are 



TOMBS OF THE KINGS 261 

covered with a white stucco, and this white stucco brilliant 
with colours, fresh as they were thousands of years ago, but 
on a scale, and with a splendour, that I can only compare to 
the frescoes of the Vatican Library. 

Some of course are more magnificent than the others j but 
of the chief seven all are of this character. They are, in 
fact, gorgeous palaces ; hewn out of the rock, and painted 
with all the decorations that could have been seen in 
palaces. No modern galleries or halls could be more com- 
pletely ornamented. But, splendid as they would be even 
as palaces, their interest is enhanced tenfold by being what 
they are. There lie " all the kings in glory ; each one in 
his own house" (Isa. xiv. 18). Every Egyptian potentate, 
but especially every Egyptian king, seems to have begun his 
reign by preparing his sepulchre. It was so in the case of 
the Pyramids, where each successive layer marked the suc- 
cessive years of the reign. It was so equally in these 
Theban tombs, where the longer or shorter reign can be 
traced by the extent of the chambers, or the completeness 
of their finish. In one or two instances, you pass at once 
from the most brilliant decorations to rough unhewn rock. 
The king had died, and the grave closed over his imperfect 
work. At the entrance of each tomb, he stands making 
offerings to the Sun, who, with his hawk's head, wishes him 
a long life to complete his labours. 

Two ideas seem to reign through the various sculptures. 

First, the endeavour to reproduce, as far as possible, the 
life of man, so that the mummy of the dead king, whether 



262 EGYPT 

in his long sleep, or on his awakening, might still be encom- 
passed by the old familiar objects. Egypt, with all its 
peculiarities, was to be perpetuated in the depths of the 
grave ; and truly they have succeeded. Not the collections 
of Pompeii at Naples give more knowledge of Greek or 
Roman life than these do of Egyptian. The kitchen, the 
dinners, the boating, the dancing, the trades, all are there — 
all fresh from the hands of the painters of the primeval 
world. 

The other idea is that of conducting the king to the 
world of death. 

The further you advance into the tomb, the deeper you 
become involved in endless processions of jackal-headed 
gods, and monstrous forms of genii, good and evil ; and the 
Goddess of Justice, with her single ostrich feather ; and 
barges carrying mummies, raised aloft over the sacred lake, 
and mummies themselves ; and, more than all, everlasting 
convolutions of serpents in every possible form and attitude ; 
human-legged, human-headed, crowned, entwining mum- 
mies — enwreathing or embraced by processions— extending 
down whole galleries, so that meeting the head of the ser- 
pent at the top of the staircase, you have to descend to its 
very end before you reach his tail. At last you arrive at 
the close of all — the vaulted hall, in the centre of which 
lies the immense granite sarcophagus which ought to con- 
tain the body of the King. Here the processions, above, 
below, and around, reach their highest pitch — meandering 
round and round — white and black, and red and blue legs, 



TOMBS OF THE KINGS 263 

and arms, and wings spreading in enormous forms over the 
ceiling ; and below lies, as I have said, the coffin itself. 

It seems certain that all this gorgeous decoration was, on 
the burial of the King, immediately closed, and meant to be 
closed forever; so that what we now see was intended 
never to be seen by any mortal eyes except those of the 
King himself when he awoke from his slumbers. Not only 
was the entrance closed, but in some cases — chiefly in that' 
of the great sepulchre of Osirei — the passages were cut in 
the most devious directions, the approaches to them so walled 
up as to give the appearance of a termination long before 
you arrived at the actual chamber, lest by any chance the 
body of the King might be disturbed. And yet in spite of 
all these precautions, when these gigantic fortresses have 
been broken through, in no instance has the mummy been 
discovered. 

Amongst the inscriptions of early travellers is one of 
peculiar interest. It is the " torch-bearer of the Eleusinian 
mysteries," who records that he visited these tombs " many 
years after the divine Plato " — thanks " to the gods and the 
most pious Emperor Constantine who afforded him this 
favour." It is written in the vacant space over the figure of 
a wicked soul returning from the presence of Osiris in the 
form of a pig, which probably arrested the attention of the 
Athenian, by reminding him of his own mysteries. Such a 
confluence of religions — of various religious associations — 
could hardly be elsewhere found ; a Greek priest-philosopher 
recording his admiration of the Egyptian worship in the 



264 EGYPT 

time of Constantine, on the eve of the abolition of both 
Greek and Egyptian religion by Christianity. 

It was on the evening of our last day that vi^e climbed the 
steep side of that grand and mysterious valley, and from the 
top of the ridge had the last view of the valley itself, as we 
looked back upon it, and of the glorious plain of Thebes as 
we looked forward over it. 

No distant prospect of the ruins can ever do them justice j 
but it was a noble point from which to see once more the 
dim masses of stone rising here and there out of the rich 
green, and to know that this was Karnak with its gateways, 
and that Luxor with its long colonnade, and those nearer 
fragments the Ramesseum and Medinet-Habu ; and further, 
the wide green depression of the soil, once the funereal 
lake. 

Immediately below lay the Valley of Assassif, where, in a 
deep recess under towering crags, like those of Delphi, lay 
the tombs of the priests and princes. The largest of them, 
in extent the largest of any, is that of Petumenap, Chief 
Priest in the reign of Pharaoh Neco. Its winding galleries 
are covered with hieroglyphics, as if hung with tapestry. 
The only figures which it contains are those which appear 
again and again in those priestly tombs, the touching 
effigies of himself and his wife — the best image that can be 
carried away of Joseph and Asenath — sitting side by side, 
their arms affectionately and solemnly entwined round each 
other's necks. To have seen the Tombs of Thebes is to 
have seen the Egyptians as they lived and moved before the 




a; 
o 

X 

-1 

o 
u 

O 
Oh 



TOMBS OF THE KINGS 265 

eyes of Moses — is to have seen the utmost display of 
funereal grandeur which has ever possessed the human 
mind. To have seen the Royal Tombs is more than this — ■ 
it is to have seen the whole religion of Egypt unfolded as 
it appeared to the greatest powers of Egypt, at the most 
solemn moments of their lives. And this can be explored 
only on the spot. 



ROYAL MUMMIES 

A. B. DE GUERVILLE 

ACCORDING to Diodorus, Thebes was the most 
ancient city of the Nile Valley, and is believed to 
have been founded, like Memphis, by Menes, 
B. c. 4400. Homer has sung its praises, and described to 
us its greatness and its glory, its loo gates and 20,000 
chariots of war. This celebrated town stretched not only 
on the right side of the Nile, where to-day we find Luxor 
and the ruins of Karnak, but also on the left bank, where, 
in the midst of the fertile fields, superb ruins are still to be seen. 
The Ramesseum, an immense temple built by Rameses 
II., the Colossi of Memnon, two extraordinary statues 
whose heads seem to threaten heaven itself, the famous 
temple of Medinet-Habu, all these are still standing, and 
are of the greatest interest. Formerly, when Thebes flour- 
ished, the Necropolis was on this side of the Nile as well 
as the houses of the priests, the embalmers, the craftsmen 
and workmen engaged on the tombs, the buildings contain- 
ing the sacred animals, the schools and libraries. At the 
foot of the valley rose the Libyan mountains, whose sides 
are honeycombed with tombs. On the left, in a small 
valley, are the tombs of the Queens, whilst on the right, in 
another valley, bare and narrow, lie those of the Kings. 
These are to my mind the most interesting and marvellous 




Iff ' "*^ -*i^- 







THE NILE AT BOULAC 



ROYAL MUMMIES 267 

sights in all Egypt, and I shall never forget the impression 
left on me by my visit. 

Accompanied by Mr. Quibell, a Scotsman, Inspector- 
General of Antiquities, and a charming companion, I set 
ofF early one morning from the Rameses. The day was 
sunny and the air delicious. Crossing the Nile by sailing- 
boats vi^e mounted the donkeys which awaited us, and, for 
nearly an hour, galloped across the fertile country until we 
reached the entrance to the Valley of the Kings, narrow 
and hemmed in by barren yellow rocks. The contrast 
between the land which we had just left, teeming with life, 
changed in a moment to this road to Death, where not a 
bird, not an insect, not the shadow of a living creature 
could be seen, was most striking. This was truly the Gate 
of Death, the Valley of Nothingness, at the end of which 
lay the gaping tombs of once powerful Kings who, wishing 
to pass in peace their last long sleep, had hollowed out, 
above and below in the side of the barren rock, marvellous 
caves, carved, painted and chiselled, where their mortal re- 
mains might at last rest. 

" Oh, Kings ! Vanity, vanity, all is vanity ! Ye who 
had ordained to be buried here with thy jewels and precious 
stones, thine ivories and gilded furnishings; ye did not 
understand that the day would come when thy priests who 
defended the entrance to thy tombs should vanish away, 
and thy people be destroyed, that thieves should break 
through to steal, should burst the doors and break down 
the walls, should pierce even the shell itself, and carry 



268 EGYPT 

away with them from the sacred precincts of the grave thy 
royal remains ! " 

But so it came to pass. According to M. Maspero, some 
966 years B.C., robbers had become so powerful, and could 
so easily defy the Government, that they had desecrated 
several of the royal tombs, until Aauputh, son of Shashank, 
decided to have all the caves opened, and the coffins with 
their remains removed to one vast cavern, where, some 
thirty centuries later, they were destined to be once more 
brought to light in a strange manner. 

It seems that in 187 1 an Arab, named Abd er Rasul 
Ahmad, found by chance the entrance to this cave, and 
understanding the rich find which it contained determined 
to profit by it. He announced his discovery to his two 
brothers and his son, and for several years he and his ac- 
complices sold to tourists objects of great value but small 
size, which they could easily carry from their hiding-place 
to their homes. At last, in 188 1, the Egyptologists wak- 
ened up, and M. Maspero, at that time Director of the 
Museum at Cairo, came to Luxor to make inquiries. 
After difficulties without number, and too long to recount 
here, the hiding-place was discovered, and the royal mum- 
mies took the road to Cairo, where they finally made their 
appearance at the Museum under glass cases. Two years 
later the mummy of Queen Mes-Hent Themebu began to 
emit an odour which was far from being agreeable, and it 
was found necessary to unswathe her. Soon it was the turn 
of Queen Nefartari, who after being unrolled completely 



ROYAL MUMMIES 269 

putrified, and had to be buried. It was then decided to 
undo all the mummies and air them, and a beginning was 
made with Rameses II. He was the first of the Egyptian 
Sovereigns whose form was revealed to the world, 3,200 
years after his mummification. 

Though emptied of their mortal remains, of the furni- 
ture and utensils with which they were adorned, the tombs 
of the Kings are still of extraordinary interest. The 
sculptures and the bas-reliefs are admirably preserved, and 
a number of the paintings, even after so many centuries, 
are of incredible freshness and vividness. 

Of the fifty and odd royal tombs mentioned by his- 
torians, forty-three have, I believe, been discovered, and are 
to-day open to the public. All are hewn out of the solid 
rock, and are composed of long passages leading to vast 
chambers, of which the last, containing the sepulchre, is 
situated some 300 to 500 feet from the entrance. 

To the ancient Egyptians their tomb was not simply a 
coffin laid in a grave, but a huge apartment, beautifully 
ornamented and decorated by the greatest painters and 
sculptors of the time, and in which the dead could walk at 
his ease and enjoy all the comforts to which he had been 
accustomed. Thus we find on the walls and on the pillars 
scenes, wonderfully depicted, of the life which he had led, 
and the future life as he imagined it to be. 

Mr, Quibell conducted me first of all to the tomb of 
Meremptah discovered only a few months ago, and which 
had not yet been opened to the public. The passages and 



270 EGYPT 

ante-chambers were lighted by electricity, which enabled 
one to admire all the details ; but the sepulchre itself, the 
sanctuary, was, when we entered, in complete darkness. 
Suddenly the sombre cave was filled with light, and, under 
the brilliant glare of the electric lamps, I saw before me an 
immense and beautiful granite figure of tender gray colour, 
lying on its back, with hands crossed on its breast. The 
effect produced by this wonderful carving of the dead, cut 
on the cover of his coffin, is unforgettable. 

For me, however, of all the tombs which I saw, that 
which impressed me most was of Amenhotep, probably 
because it was the only one in which the mummy still re- 
mained. In the middle of the sanctuary is a superb and 
enormous coffin of red marble, the covering of which has 
been removed, and in which rests the corpse. A part of 
the bands which enwound it has been undone, and the head, 
the neck and the shoulders appear black and dry. It is im- 
possible to describe the effect of the sight of this once 
powerful monarch, who, 3,500 years after his death, reposes, 
so small, so withered, under the rays of the Edison lamps. 
Mockery of human desires ! After piercing the very 
bowels of the mountain, where he believed that, inac- 
cessible and still, he would sleep his eternal sleep, he is to- 
day exposed to the gaze of thousands of curious tourists. 

A short time after my leaving Luxor, another royal 
tomb was discovered by Mr. Theodore Davis, an Ameri- 
can, who is also a distinguished Egyptologist, and who 
passes his winters in archaeological research. One can 



ROYAL MUMMIES 271 

easily imagine his joy when, after his long, difficult and 
costly researches, he at last saw his efforts crowned with 
success, and a royal tomb lay open before him. 

If I was unlucky to leave Luxor before this new dis- 
covery I had, at least, the good fortune to hear, a short 
time after, the lecture given on the subject by M. Maspero. 
With the greatest simplicity, in a clear and easy style, with 
a soft and winning voice, the Director of the Museum ex- 
plained to us that this was the tomb of Queen Tia, wife of 
Amenhotep III., who lived b. c. 1500. M. Maspero 
rendered well-merited praise to the rich foreigners who, like 
Mr. Davis, with their time and their money, lend aid to his 
Department, then he continued : 

" The excavations made by Mr. Davis took place in a 
corner of the Valley of the Kings, where the majority of 
Egyptologists did not consider that anything interesting 
would be found. Destiny decreed that just there Mr. 
Davis should make one of the most interesting and impor- 
tant discoveries of our time. The tomb of Queen Tia 
was in fact intact, although at the time of the Roman period 
it had evidently been visited by robbers. But these con- 
tented themselves with taking the jewels, and left the rest un- 
touched. We were so keen to see this tomb without alter- 
ing anything that we penetrated by a Httle hole just large 
enough to admit a child, a thief . . . or an archaeologist. 

" Near the entrance we found a superb scarabee, and 
some elaborate vases evidently lost en route by the thieves, a 
bad sign, which showed us that the tomb had been opened. 



272 EGYPT 

Great was our joy therefore when we discovered that the 
sanctuary was intact, and full of a thousand objects which 
recalled the past. On the brick wall which had until to- 
day separated it from the world, we could still see the marks 
of muddy hands — hands of men, now for centuries dead, 
who had sealed it up, as they thought, for eternity. The 
dead centuries rose up before us as though alive. On the 
middle of the coffin a pink cushion lay carelessly thrown ; 
at the side was a chair of modern appearance, rather in the 
Empire style, yet with I know not what of Egyptian. 
Further away was a gilded armchair with straight legs, 
which recalled the style of Louis XVI,, and, facing it, yet 
another quite Egyptian. Here too was a chariot, covered 
with leaf-gold, complete with its wheels, pole and yoke. 
Here also a complete suite of furniture, large chests of 
black wood, and seventy-two jars containing offerings and 
provisions, ducks, haunches of venison, meat dried or 
mummified, bread, wheat, and in others traces of the wine 
and perfumes which they had contained. One large vase 
was overturned by accident, and from it came a thick yel- 
lowish matter, honey, and strange to say, at that very mo- 
ment, we saw, alighting on it, a bee which had entered 
'from without. At the side were objects of gold, ivory, 
silver, not to mention an enormous bunch of onions ! " 

Then M. Maspero proceeded to give us some charming 
details of the life led by these ancient Egyptians in general, 
and Queen Tia in particular, who, it would seem, was a 
remarkable woman. 



THE DAHABEAH 

FREDERIC EDEN 

A DAHABEAH has generally fine lines and a very 
handsome shape ; she is built of wood as a rule, but 
not rarely of iron. Her sides are low, her beam 
is great, and her draught light. In one respect her form is 
peculiar, for the bow is much deeper in the water than the 
stern. The older boats have a considerable sheer, the stern 
especially cocking up high out of the water, but the newer 
ones are flatter. 

She is furnished with four means of progression, viz., 
sails, punting-poles, tow-rope and oars. The first three 
are used almost exclusively on the voyage up, and the oars 
on the voyage down. Her sails, two in number, are lateen. 
The trinkeet, or forward sail, is of great size, the yard on 
which it is laced being as long, and sometimes longer, than 
the hull of the boat itself. The ballakoon, or after sail, is 
small, bearing to the foresail much the same proportion as 
the dandy of a yawl has to its mainsail. Into the after 
part of the dahabeah is built a wooden house, which some- 
times fills nearly half the boat; and the size of a distant 
dahabeah may be easily told by the number, six or eight, 
nine or ten of the Venetian blinded windows with which 
the sides of the house are pierced. Inside are the cabins ; 



274 EGYPT 

outside, on the roof, the deck where the Nile travellers' time 
is almost spent. Two or three steps from the cabin's floor, 
which is in fact the floor of the boat itself, lead up on to 
the main deck, and from this a staircase, or in large boats 
two, one on each side, gives access to the deck above. 
Three-fourths of the main deck are made of movable bars 
or planks that are taken up when the oars are used ; and it 
is under this part of the deck that packages and cases are 
stored. The oars on the return voyage when not in use 
are lashed along the sides, each to its pin ; but on going up 
they generally serve as a rail round the upper deck, being 
fastened rail-wise to iron uprights fixed for the support of 
the awning. Round the mast are ranged the punting-poles 
that play no second-rate part in a Nile voyage ; and imme- 
diately in front of it the cook's galley. Every part of the 
boat from stem to stern is fitted with awnings. Canvas is 
the only roof ever given to the kitchen ; it closes in, when 
required, the sides of the main deck and of the cabins. It 
roofs them in also, and affords every possible protection 
from the sun. In the tents so made the crew sleep : the 
men on the main deck, the reis, or captain, and one or two 
others, on the upper deck ; and in them on every day of 
rest the men hold feast and holiday. So swathed in her 
awnings is a dahabeah on such an occasion that as little can 
be seen of her as of a race-horse in his clothes. 

The Lotus^ a very small boat, was about fifty-three feet 
long by ten feet broad. She had three cabins and a closet, 
opening one into the other. The main cabin, most amid- 



THE DAHABEAH 275 

ships, was eight feet three inches broad, six feet six inches 
long, and six feet six inches high j the other two were of 
the same length and height, but narrowing with the curve 
of the vessel. Large dahabeahs, indeed all that we saw ex- 
cepting ours, have a passage down the middle leading aft 
from the main cabin. On either side are the sleeping 
cabins, often necessarily very narrow. Our boat, having 
no passage, afforded us better sleeping accommodation than 
we should have had in a vessel twice as large ; but the main 
cabin was small. Divans on either side of each cabin, and 
an infinity of lockers, drawers and shelves, turned the 
space, however, to the best account, and for two people the 
little boat was very comfortable. Going out of the cabin 
on to the main deck, on one side was the staircase to the 
upper deck, on the other the pantry ; and in front, by the 
mast, stood the filter— a large goolah jar, set in a green 
wooden case. These jars are of earth, very porous, and 
consequently cooling. 

On the upper deck stand chairs and divans, and perhaps 
a table. It can, as I have said, be completely surrounded 
and covered in by awnings, and a handsome Persian carpet 
is often spread upon it. The forewarder part is in fact a 
day-room, used by the owners more than is the main cabin. 
From the after part the boat is steered, and it is more or 
less abandoned to the reis, steersman and the poultry. Our 
boat, however, had a ginnayn, or garden, as the five or six 
feet of extreme stern, sometimes not occupied by the 
cabins, is called, from the habit that prevails in the native 



276 EGYPT 

boats of placing here one or more pots of flowers, generally 
cactuses. We found our garden most useful. From it the 
ballakoon was worked, and in it our chicken-coops were 
ranged. 

Such is the best description I can give of the travelling 
Nile-boat ; and a more graceful boat, or one better suited 
for its purpose, it would be hard to find. The fine lines 
and immense sails give it the power requisite to stem the 
rapid current of the Nile. The lateen cut of these sails 
spreads the canvas high above the shelter of the oftentimes 
deep banks. The great beam gives stability and accommo- 
dation. The light draught makes her easy to tow, and, 
for so large a boat, easy also to row. Thereby, too, she 
has a better chance of escaping the numerous sand-banks ; 
and as she strikes them with her deepest part, the bow, she 
is more easily got afloat again. The low free-board, only 
about two feet from the water-line, adds to her lightness in 
fact and appearance j whilst her long pennants, gaily painted 
sides and white canvas, bordered often by one or two 
cloths of blue, give the boat a most picturesque and holiday- 
like look. Near, or at a distance, a dahabeah is fair to see. 
Near, she is a picture of comfort and convenience, of 
adaptability of means to an end. In all things a perfect 
boat-home. At a distance she resembles a bird on the 
wing rather than a boat on the water. 

One is never dull on board a dahabeah. As the boat lies 
at the bank, and one occupies the upper deck shrouded from 
the sun and sheltered from the wind by awnings, no box at 



THE DAHABEAH 277 

a theatre is half so comfortable, and few plays so amusing 
as the scenes constantly acted before one. All is so strange, 
so new, to a man unaccustomed to Eastern life j all, at the 
same time, so old and familiar to any one up in his Arabian 
Nights, or well acquainted with his Bible. The whole is 
more like a dream, or a play, than the too realistic life of 
our northern climes with its miseries, discomforts and 
wants. The men are like children in their idleness, their 
vanity, desire for amusement, quickness in passion or de- 
light; the dirt is not dirt in that dry climate j the poverty 
is not want; the rags are merely picturesque where the 
bounteous sun keeps all things warm. Then the gravity 
with which everything, the most trivial, is done, until with 
a burst of boyish laughter, it changes into boisterous mirth, 
as some trifling jest, or good-natured practical joke, charms 
the Arab from his dignity. 

Nile travelling, as the storms we have felt and the wrecks 
we have seen sufficiently prove, is not free from risk. The 
wind blows home, the boats are not too manageable, and by 
no means well-managed. There is little discipline, small 
skill and no courage, to be found among the crews. The 
immense sail, the long yard, and the house on deck in 
which one lives, give great hold to the wind. A shoal or 
leeshore is always close, and under these circumstances it is 
quite possible to come to grief. 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA—HELIOPOLIS^ 

THE NILE VALLEY—THE FIRST 

CATARACT— PHILAE 



1 



DEAN STANLEY 

"^HE eastern sky was red with the early dawn; we 
were on the broad waters of the Nile — or rather, 
its Rosetta branch. The first thing that struck 
me was its size. Greater than the Rhine, Rhone, or 
Danube, one perceives what a sea-like stream it must have 
appeared to Greeks and Italians, who had seen nothing 
larger than the narrow and precarious torrents of their own 
mountains and valleys. As the light broke, its colour gradu- 
ally revealed itself — brown like the Tiber, only of a darker 
and richer hue — no strong current, only a slow vast volume 
of water, mild and beneficent as the statute in the Vatican, 
steadily flowing on between its two almost uniform banks, 
which rise above it much like the banks of a canal, though 
in some places with terraces or strips of earth, marking the 
successive stages of the flood. 

These banks form the horizon on either side, and there- 
fore you can have no notion of the country beyond ; but 
they are varied by a succession of Eastern scenes — villages 
of mud like ant-hills, except in numbers and activity — 
mostly, however, distinguished by the minaret of a well- 
built mosque, or the white oven-like dome of a sheykh's 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA 279 

tomb ; mostly, also, screened by a grove of palms, sometimes 
intermixed with feathery tamarisks, and the thick foliage of 
the carob-tree, or the sycamore. Verdure, where it is visi- 
ble, is light green, but the face of the bank is usually brown. 
Along the top of the banks move, like scenes in a magic 
lantern, and as if cut out against the sky, groups of Arabs, 
with their two or three asses, a camel, or a buffalo. 

To-day was our first expedition into the real " Land of 
Egypt." Through two hours of green fields — green with 
corn and clover — avenues of tamarisk, fig-trees and acacia j 
along causeways raised high above these fields — that is, 
above the floods of the summer inundations — we rode to 
Heliopolis. At every turn there was the grateful sound of 
little rills of living water, worked by water-wheels, and fall- 
ing in gentle murmurs down into these little channels along 
the roadside, whence they fell off^ into the fields, or the 
canals. The sides of these canals were black with the deep 
soil of the land of Ham. Beyond was the green again, and 
close upon that, like the sea breaking upon the shore, rose 
the yellow hills of the hazy desert. 

At the very extremity of this cultivated ground are the 
ruins of On or Heliopolis. They consist simply of a wide 
enclosure of earthen mounds partly planted with gardens. 
In these gardens are two vestiges of the great Temple of the 
Sun, the high-priest of which was father-in-law of Joseph, 
and, in later times, the teacher of Moses. 

One is a pool, overhung with willows and aquatic vege- 
tation, — the spring of the Sun. 



28o EGYPT 

The other, now rising wild amidst garden shrubs, the 
solitary obelisk which stood in front of the temple then in 
company with another, whose base alone now remains. 
This is the first obelisk I have seen standing in its proper 
place, and there it has stood for nearly four thousand years. 
It is the oldest known in Egypt, and therefore in the world, 
— the father of all that have arisen since. It was raised 
about a century before the coming of Joseph ; it has looked 
down upon his marriage with Asenath ; it has seen the 
growth of Moses ; it is mentioned by Herodotus ; Plato sat 
under its shadow ; of all the obelisks which sprang up 
around it, it alone has kept its first position. One by one 
it has seen its sons and brothers depart to great destinies 
elsewhere. From these gardens came the obelisks of the 
Lateran, of the Vatican, of the Porta del Popolo ; and this 
venerable pillar (for so it looks from a distance) is now al- 
most the only landmark of the great seat of the wisdom of 
Egypt. 

But I must not forget the view from the walls. Putting 
out of sight the minarets of Cairo in the distance, it was 
the same that Joseph and Moses had as they looked out 
towards Memphis, -the sandy desert ; the green fields of 
Egypt ; and, already in their time ancient, the Pyramids 
in the distance. This is the first day that has really given 
me an impression of their size. In this view, the two 
great pyramids stand so close together that they form one 
bifurcated cone ; and this cone does, indeed, look like a 
solitary peak rising over the plain — like Etna from the 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA 281 

sea. On the other side, in the yellow desert, seen through 
the very stems of the palm-trees, rise three rugged sand- 
hills, indicating the site of Leontopolis, the City of the 
Sacred Lions ; where in after times rose the second colony 
of the Jews under Onias. 

One more object I must mention, though of doubtful 
interest, and thus, unlike the certainties that I have just 
been describing. In a garden, immediately outside the 
walls, is an ancient fig-tree, its immense gnarled trunk 
covered with the names of travellers (in form not unlike 
the sacred Ash of the sources of the Danube), where 
Coptic belief and the tradition of the Apocryphal Gospels 
fix the refuge of Mary and Joseph on the flight into 
Egypt. There can of course be no proof, but it reminds 
us that, for the first time, our eyes may have seen the 
same outline that was seen by Our Lord. 

I am now confined within the valley of the Nile — I may 
say literally confined. Never in my life have I travelled 
continuously along a single valley with all the outer world 
so completely shut off. Between two limestone ranges 
which form part of the table-land of the Arabian and 
African desert, flows the mighty river, which the Egyptians 
called Hapi-Mu, "the genius of the waters"; which the 
Hebrews called sometimes " lor," from some unknown 
meaning — sometimes " Sihor," " the black." Its brown 
colour, seen from the heights on either side and contrasted 
with the still browner and blacker colours of all around it, 
seems as blue and bright as the rivers of the North ; hence, 



282 EGYPT 

some say, the word " Nile " which is the form adopted by 
the Greeks, and by all the world since. 

The two limestone ranges press it at unequal intervals, 
sometimes leaving a space of a few miles, sometimes of 
a few yards, sometimes even a large plain. They are 
truly parts of a table mountain. Hardly ever is their 
horizontal line varied j the only change in them is their 
nearer or less approach to the stream. In this respect, the 
eastern range is a much greater offender than the western, 
and therefore the great line of Egyptian cities is on the 
western, not on the eastern shore. On the other hand, 
the western range, where it does approach, is more for- 
midable, because it comes clothed with the sands of the 
African desert^ — sands and sand-drifts, which in purity, in 
brightness, in firmness, in destructiveness, are the snows 
and glaciers of the South. Immediately above the brown 
and blue waters of the broad, calm, lake-like river, rises a 
thick, black bank of clod or mud, mostly in terraces. 
Green — unutterably green — mostly at the top of these 
banks, though sometimes creeping down to the water's edge, 
lies the Land of Egypt. Green — unbroken, save by the 
mud villages which here and there lie in the midst of the 
verdure, like the marks of a soiled foot on a rich carpet ; 
or by the dykes and channels which convey the life-giving 
waters through the thirsty land. This is the Land of 
Egypt, and this is the memorial of the yearly flood. Up 
these black terraces, over those green fields, the water rises 
and descends ; " Et viridem Mgyptum nigra fecundat arena** 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA 283 

And not only when the flood is actually there, but 
throughout the whole year, is water commonly ascending 
through innumerable wheels worked by native figures, as 
the Israelites of old " in the service of the field," and then 
flowing on in gentle rills through the various allotments. 
To the seeds of these green fields, to the fishes of the wide 
river, is attached another natural phenomenon which I 
never saw equalled : the numbers numberless of all manner 
of birds — vultures and cormorants, and geese, flying like 
constellations through the blue heavens ; pelicans standing 
in long array on the waterside ; hoopoes and ziczacs, and 
the (so-called) white ibis, the gentle symbol of the God 
Osiris in his robes of white, walking under one's very feet. 

At Silsilis, the seat of the ancient sandstone quarries, 
there was a scene which stood alone on the voyage. The 
two ranges, here of red sandstone, closed in upon the 
Nile, like the Drachenfels and Rolandsech, fantastic rock- 
ery, deep sand-drifts, tombs and temples hewn out of stone, 
the cultivated land literally reduced to a few feet or 
patches of rush or grass. It was curious to reflect that 
those patches of green were for the time the whole of the 
Land of Egypt, — we ourselves, as we swept by in our 
boat, the whole living population contained within its 
eastern and western boundaries. It soon opened again, 
wide plains spreading on each side. 

And now the narrow limits of the sandstone range which 
had succeeded to our old friends of limestone, and from 
which were dug the materials of almost all the temples of 



284 EGYPT 

Egypt, are exchanged at Assouan — the old Syene — for the 
granite range; the Syenite granite, from which the Nile 
issues out of the mountains of Nubia. 

For the first time a serrated mass of hills ran, not as 
heretofore along the banks, but across the southern horizon 
itself. The broad stream of the river, too, was broken up, 
not as heretofore by the sand-banks, but by fantastic masses 
of black porphyry and granite and by high rocky islands, 
towering high above the shores. Far and wide these 
fantastic rocks are strewn, far into the eastern Desert, far 
up the course of the Nile itself. 

These are the rocks which make and are made by the 
Cataract. These, too, furnish the quarries from whence 
came the great colossal statues of Rameses, and all the 
obelisks. From this wild and distant region sprang all those 
familiar forms which we know so well in the squares of Rome. 
In the quarries which are still visible in the white sands 
and black crags immediately east of Assouan, one obelisk 
still remains, hewn out but never removed from its original 
birthplace ; the latest, as that of Heliopolis, is the earliest 
born of the race. And not only are these rocks the quar- 
ries of the statues, but it is hardly possible to look at their 
forms and not believe that they suggested the idea. Islands, 
quarries, crags along the riverside, all seem either like 
grotesque colossal figures, sitting with their grim fea- 
tures carved out against the sky, their vast limbs often 
smoothed by the inundations of successive ages ; or else like 
the same statues broken to shivers, like that we saw at 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA 285 

Thebes. One can quite imagine how, in the days when 
power was will and will was power, Rameses, returning 
from his Ethiopian conquests, should say : " Here is the 
stone hard and glittering, from which my statue shall be 
hewn, and here is the model after which it shall be 
fashioned." 

This is the utmost limit of the journey of Herodotus. 
He had been told a strange story, which he says he could 
not believe, by the treasurer at Sais, that at this point of 
the river there were two mountains running up into sharp 
peaks and called Crophi and Mophi, between which were 
the ^sources of the Nile, from which it ran down, north- 
wards on one side into Egypt, and southwards on the other 
into Ethiopia. He came, he says, to verify it, and observes 
(doubtless with truth) that by those deep, unfathomable 
sources which they described, they meant the violent eddies 
of the Cataracts. To an inhabitant of Lower Egypt, the 
sight or the report of such a convulsion as the rapids make 
in the face of their calm and majestic river must have 
seemed^ like the very beginning of his existence, the strug- 
gling into life of what afterwards became so mild and bene- 
ficial. 

And now it is immediately above the roar of these rapids 
— but still in the very centre of these colossal rockeries — 
that you emerge into sight of an island lying in the windings 
of the river — fringed with palms, and crowned with a long 
line of temples and colonnades. This is Philae. 

The name expresses its situation — it is said to be 



286 EGYPT 

" Pilek," *' the frontier " between Egypt and Ethiopia. Its 
situation is more curious than beautiful, and the same is 
true of its temples. As seen from the river or the rocks, 
their brown sandstone colour, their dead walls hardly emerge 
sufficiently from the sand and mud cottages which enclose 
them round, and the palms are not sufficiently numerous to 
relieve the bare and mean appearance which the rest of the 
island presents. As seen from within, however, the glimpses 
of the river, the rocky knolls, and the feathery tresses of 
the palm, through the vista, the massive walls and colon- 
nades irregular and perverse in all their proportions, but 
still grand from their size, are in the highest degree peculiar. 
Foreground — distance — art and nature are here quite 
unique ; the rocks and river (of which you might see the 
like elsewhere) are wholly unlike Egypt, as the square 
towers, the devious perspective, and the sculptured walls 
are wholly anything else except Egypt. 

The whole temple is so modern, that it no way illus- 
trates, except so far as it copies them, the feelings of the 
religion of the old Egyptians. The earliest, and the only 
Egyptian, name that occurs upon it is Nectanebo, an 
Egyptian prince who revolted against the later Persian kings. 
All the rest are the Grecian Ptolemies, and of these the 
chief Ptolemy Physcon, or the Fat, so called because he 
became so bloated by his luxurious living that he measured 
six feet round, and who proposed, but in vain, to Cornelia, 
mother of the Gracchi. But in this very fact of its modern 
origin there is a peculiar interest. It is the fullest specimen 



THE NILE IN THE DELTA 287 

of the restoration of the old Egyptian worship by the 
Ptolemies, and of an attempt, like ours, in Gothic architec- 
ture, to revive a style and forms which had belonged to 
ages far away. The Ptolemies here, as in many other 
places, were trying " to throw themselves into Egyptian wor- 
ship, follov/ing in the steps of Alexander, the son of Am- 
mon." In many ways this appears. First, there is much 
for show without real use — one great side chapel, perhaps 
the finest of the group, built for the sake of its terrace 
towards the river — the main entrance to the Temple being 
in fact no entrance at all. Then there is the want of 
sympathy which always more or less distinguishes the 
Egyptian architecture, but is here carried to a ridiculous 
excess. No perspective is carried consistently through : 
the sides of the same courts are of different styles : no one 
gateway is in the same line with another. Lastly, there is the 
curious sight of sculptures, contemporary with the finest 
works of Greek Art, and carved under Grecian kings, as 
rude and coarse as those under the earliest Pharaohs, to be 
" in keeping " with Egyptian architecture and to " preserve 
the ancient type," like the mediaeval figures in painted 
windows and the illegible inscriptions round the arches of 
some modern English churches. And not only are the 
forms but the subjects imitated, long after all meaning had 
passed away, and this not only in the religious figures of 
Isis and the gods. There is something ludicrously grotesque 
in colossal bas-reliefs of kings seizing innumerable captives 
by the hair of their head, as in the ancient sculptures of 



288 EGYPT 

Rameses — kings who reigned at a time when all conquests 
had ceased, and who had, perhaps, never stirred out of the 
palaces and libraries of Alexandria. 

The mythological interest of the Temple is in connection 
with Isis, who is its chief divinity, and accordingly the 
sculptures of her, of Osiris, and of Horus, are countless. 
The most remarkable, though in a very obscure room, and 
on a very small scale, is the one representing the death of 
Osiris, and then his embalmment, burial, gradual restoration, 
and enthronement as judge of the dead. But this legend be- 
longs, like the rest of the temple, to the later, not the an- 
cient, stage of Egyptian belief. 



NILE SCENES 

FREDERIC EDEN 

FROM Wishna we had a most lovely sail to Keneh, 
passing through some of the prettiest country we 
had yet seen. Belts and rows of palms encircled 
the cultivated ground ; and the lines of trees and the curve 
of the banks, as well as the plots of land were constantly 
broken by clumps of palms or by thickets of mimosas, and 
the fan-leaved dom palm. The new corn was already well 
up, and the foreground, where the banks were sloping, 
looked like a green Thames lawn running down to the 
water's edge. The landscape, too, was set in a frame of 
the first mountains we had seen in Egypt. 

Arrived at Keneh we were within the Thebiad, and not 
forty miles from Luxor and Karnak. 

On the river near El Ballas we met several rafts, formed 
entirely of the earthen bottles in which the Egyptian women 
carry water. These Ballas jars (for, made at El Ballas, 
they take their name from the village) are not porous like 
the goolahs. Nearly two feet high, and fining to a round 
point at the bottom, they are carried on the head, the end 
resting in a roll or circlet of cotton cloth or rag. The jar 
holding perhaps two gallons is, when full, so heavy that 
it is often most difficult for the women without assistance 



290 EGYPT 

to get it upon their heads. They therefore, as a rule, go 
to the watering-places in pairs, or in a body ; but we often 
saw one who happened to be alone lift the jar on to the 
edge of the steep bank above her and stoop to bring her 
head underneath it. The jar once raised is carried as 
lightly and gracefully as if it were nothing heavier than a 
chignon ; and I have seen a delicate looking woman stand 
for five minutes at a time with this crushing burden on her 
head, arrested by no greater attraction than ourselves. 

The jars transport themselves and owners to the down 
river markets. Bound together by palm-tree fibre, they 
are formed into a raft two or three jars deep and perhaps 
sixty by fifty wide. Each raft is provided with a helm 
and oars, fitted like the timber rafts of Europe, but made of 
rough untrimmed branches, and is sufficiently buoyant to 
hold out of the water the upper tier of jars, and the four or 
five men in charge. 

On the next day a gentle breeze carried us up to Kar- 
nak, and we drew up for luncheon alongside the bank op- 
posite the ruins. Then, as it proved most difficult to reach 
them, we got under way again, and ran up to Luxor, the 
most convenient halting-place from whence to visit the 
Theban ruins. 

Left to myself, I laid on the bank under an awning and 
watched the manners of the natives. Underneath me was 
a small branch or creek of the Nile, which reenters the main 
river at Luxor. In this backwater the Lotus lay fastened 
to the bank, and above and below her were half a dozen 




< 



NILE SCENES 291 

other dahabeahs, and perhaps twice as many native boats. 
The last, with aged timbers, torn sails, and destitute of 
paint J the dahabeahs gay with the flags of all nations, 
bright with the paint of various hues, their long pennants 
floating out in the breeze, or lazily flapping the water. 
Opposite was a cerulean blue ; close on our right a ginger 
brown ; we, lotus like, wore white and green with just a 
line of pink ; one was clad in green ; and another had 
broken out in lobster red. But painted however they may 
be, dahabeahs, with their holiday keeping and bent-on- 
pleasure look, beflagged, bestreamered, and much awninged, 
are pleasant to the eye. 

So, too, was Luxor, with its temples, consuls* flags, and 
the palms, on this side visible. Opposite to me, at only a 
few yards' distance, was the watering-place, the common 
resort of all the town. Old-fashioned is the Egyptian's 
idea of water. With him, the Nile is everywhere the Nile. 
The Nile supplies the sweetest of water ; and from what- 
ever part of the river the water is taken, is it not the Nile 
water, and therefore sweet and good, nay, sweeter than 
any ? This watering-place was being used for every con- 
ceivable purpose including many Eastern customs that it 
would be difficult to describe in Western language. The 
men come down, squat on the brink and wash in it. A 
beggar man sits down by it, with a lump of bread we had 
given him in one hand, some refuse green stuff he had 
picked up, as salad, in the other, and dipping and rinsing 
this frugal fare, he eats. Pausing for a moment in his meal 



292 ' EGYPT 

he wipes his mouth with his hand, and continuing the down- 
ward action, fills the palm and drinks. Just below, the 
cook of a dahabeah is killing chickens over a gunwale, and 
plucking a turkey. Groups of women, side by side, wash 
their clothes and fill their water jars. Those blows that 
one hears like a stick weightily laid on the ribs of a donkey, 
or the beating of carpets in England, are the thuds of the 
feet, as with a hop and a jump they bring first the left and 
then the right heavily on the clothes heap laid at the water's 
edge. 

Nothing changes in Egypt : these women have the very 
features and shape depicted on the sculptures. There are 
the beautiful rounded arms, the small wrists and hands, the 
tapered fingers, the filbert nails. There, too, are the mag- 
nificent busts and the well-shaped legs ; and there, too, are 
not that roundness of shape and swell of form that Leech 
has claimed for his English models, as with a sweep of his 
pencil, he made them almost impossibly beautiful. Amongst 
them, however, is a Nubian girl of very different propor- 
tions ; and here come three buffaloes, driven down to drink 
and take their daily bath. They stretch themselves in the 
river with nose and face alone above the surface stirring up 
the mud, but in no degree altering the colour of the water ; 
and there on the back of a cow the calf has rested its head 
and lies tranquilly chewing the cud. Next, a string of 
donkeys delivers its load of a salt, called natron, that is 
found in the ruins close by ; and three camels, roaring, bit- 
ing and struggling, are forced into the water, washed and 



NILE SCENES 293 

scraped. In the midst of all, a dozen naked boys are 
splashing about, and the town water-carriers alternately fill 
themselves and their goat skins. All this and much be- 
sides is done j and it must be remembered, not in the stream 
of the Nile, but in the unchanging water of a small and 
shallow creek. 

Constantly coming up to the same place, were native 
boats of all forms and build. There is one towing up the 
river bank, full of brown-garmented fellaheen. As they 
come to the point where the creek reenters the river, and 
cuts across their path, three or four, slipping out of their 
clothes, and into the water wade through and push their 
boat across. One's eye has become so accustomed to all 
shades of brown and black skin, that it scarce notes whether 
they are clothed or not. 

Close behind them comes a boat that would be more 
round than long, if it were not more square than either. 
The timbers of the roughest logs are held together by 
wooden pegs, whose heads, not driven home, project an inch 
or more from out of the sides. It is caulked with mud, and 
manned by three from eight to ten year old clotheless urchins. 
The protuberance of their stomachs is balanced behind, and 
their whole shape suggests the idea that it can be but a few 
generations since their family went on all fours. Then 
passes another boat. The after- part is filled with the 
canopy and posts of an old English four-post bedstead ; 
under this covering, the proprietor sits in state, solemn, se- 
date and proud, in much clothing, and with an amber mouth- 



294 EGYPT 

piece. Above his head, a negro boy squats on a canopy 
steering, and the sail, a sheet of holes and patches, is man- 
aged by a gaunt Arab, clad in what seems to be the last sail 
worn out when the present one was new. But the boats 
are endless in variety. One more, the most incongruous 
of all, and I have done. It holds an Arab boatman, a boy 
whose only covering is the scalplock on top of his shaven 
crown, and a Jew, in red fez, black frock coat, white um- 
brella and photographic apparatus. But the ferry boat must 
be added to the list. It is exactly the shape of a Turkish 
slipper, and is supposed by antiquaries to have been the 
felucca of Noah's Ark. More probably it was built about 
the same time as the temple of Karnak. Great as are the 
preservative powers of this climate, it is scarcely probable 
that any of the original timbers remain. No doubt as the 
ages wore on, a beam would occasionally decay, and be re- 
placed ; but there still remains the boat, a wondrous specimen 
of joiner's power and of wood mosaic. Into it goes a don- 
key, and another and another. Does anybody know the 
use of a donkey's tail ? An expert, say a costermonger, 
would answer " for a crupper." No such thing. From 
the beginning was Egypt and the Nile. The Nile never 
wanted a boat, nor Egypt an ass ; and the tail was given to 
help the one into the other. See how quickly it is done ! 
First his forelegs are lifted in, then a man from above in 
the boat gives a single haul at the tail, and in goes the don- 
key like a shot. 

In going south the sun must be more or less in one's 



NILE SCENES ^ 295 

eyes. The shady side of the mountains is, therefore, gen- 
erally seen, and, hill or flat, the landscape loses in colour 
from being looked at against the light. In returning north- 
ward, the sun is at the back, and everything has all the 
advantages that light and shade in this brilliant atmosphere 
can give. The mountains, too, whether on this account, or 
because we saw them before when fresh from the Tyrolean 
Alps, and now compared them with the Nubian hills, looked 
twice as big. 

We stopped at Negadeh, though not at the place we had 
chosen. The town, a very old and curious one, is situated 
in one of the most lovely spots on the Nile. It has a large 
population of Copts and pigeons. Every house is equally 
divided between the two occupants. The Copt family 
has the ground floor, the pigeons the upper story. The last, 
the better cared for of the two, is ornamented with white- 
wash, decorated with red bricks, castellated at the top, 
pierced with many loopholes at the sides, and has further, 
for the convenience of the birds, two or three rows of thick 
peasticks, which project perhaps three feet from the walls, 
and at right angles from them. The whole building is a 
square tower, and resembles an old-fashioned East Indian 
native fort. The birds are rock pigeons and common 
property; most if not all of them share their time between 
the town and some mountain a few miles inland. Within 
a certain distance of the houses no one is permitted to dis- 
turb them. The Copts vie with each other in seeking to 
promote their comfort, and so to attract the greater number. 



296 EGYPT 

each to his own dovecot. The young, as soon as eatable, are 
taken from the nests inside, and so the price of the forbear- 
ance shown to the parent birds is exacted. 

There was a market held at Negadeh, and amongst other 
things we bought for eight piastres a bundle of sugar-canes 
as a small backshish for the crew. 

The markets are most amusing : that of Sohag is well 
attended. The town itself is squalid and unattractive, but 
the Nile was full of life. Crowds of native boats were 
hurrying up, down, and from across the river to the bank. 
The guardians (native police) made room for us, delighted 
to have occasion for using their six-foot-long sticks, and 
thus to assume the bullying airs of Eastern authority. 

A native boat on a market-day resembles the last-to-be- 
filled carpet-bag of a family luggage. The amount it holds 
is only equalled by the variety of the contents ; however 
full it may be there is always room for some one thing 
more. In such a boat are packed away men, women and 
boys ; donkeys, sheep, goats and a camel ; turkeys, chick- 
ens and geese J cucumbers, onions, lettuce and trusses of 
white clover. I had almost forgotten sugar-cane, butter 
and eggs, palm ropes, mats and netting, water-jars, fleas and 
flies — for such things are there as a matter of course. 
The first thing generally seen getting out is the bare leg of 
an impatient lady. She soon follows with two chickens 
under her arm, and a score or so of eggs in the skirt of her 
clothing, which is too much occupied with its brittle 
charges to have due regard for any regular duty. Then out 



NILE SCENES 297 

rush the crowd : a number of brown-coated fellaheen stag- 
ger away under their onions or clover, and half push, half 
carry their donkeys on shore. Turbans of all degrees of 
cleanliness follow ; their wearers, too sedate to hurry, each 
with his long pipe and many with a servant to carry it. 
Perhaps a greater man still with red tarboosh, amber mouth- 
piece, three or four followers, and a donkey caparisoned 
with a red saddle and even a bridle. Only the very dis- 
tinguished " brics " are bridled. Small people content 
themselves with a cudgel, and direct their donkey by a 
blow on the cheek, or a kick with the foot. Last of all 
comes the camel, rolling, grunting, complaining, anything 
but the docile animal our early education, with its usual 
accuracy, described him to be. 

Along the shore two lines of market-goers came re- 
spectively from the north and south. Men on donkeys 
and on camels; men, women and boys on foot. Other 
lines of Arabs and beasts stretched from the bank to the 
town, laden with produce from the boats. These are oc- 
casions in which our men delight. They dress themselves 
in their best — that is put on all their clothes, one garment 
over the other; and however hot may be the weather, they 
swathe their head and shoulders in a Negadeh cloth. The 
malaiat, as this " comforter " is called, is made of thick 
cotton. The border of the same material has let into it 
lines of strong crimson and yellow silk. It is of the pat- 
tern and quality of a coarse, dark-blue English duster, and 
the size and shape of a Scotch plaid. Very ugly, very 



298 EGYPT 

stiff, ungraceful and uncomfortable, a good one costs 250 
piastres (twenty-five shillings), and is the pride of the Arab 
sailor's heart. The poorer men buy malaiats with only a 
strand or two of silk in them, or with none; but much silk 
or all cotton, the man so besuffocated swaggers along with 
an extra swagger. 

Whilst the fellaheen worked and our crew strutted off, 
we used to sit under our awning and look on at the crowd, 
ever changing, ever busy, and as unlike anything to be 
seen in the West as was the sky overhead or the air we 
breathe. An Eastern scene has thrown on it a light that 
warms and mellows everything it touches. Poverty and 
rags and dirt under Egypt's sun are picturesque, not pitiable. 
There is no damp, no cold to make the half-clothed urchins 
shiver; and lack of garments seems more an advantage 
than a want. After a time, rather long than short, our 
men, one by one, reappear. The breast of each man's 
gown, or gowns, is filled to repletion with his favourite 
dainties; and if he is rich, half-a-dozen sugar-canes lie on 
his shoulder. 

Minieh is a pretty place, and looks well to do, as indeed 
do most of the towns at this part of the river. Numbers of 
sugar factories were hard at work, others were building; the 
people seemed fully employed, healthy, well-dressed and fed. 
Quantities of boats crowded the river bank, half a dozen 
steamers had just arrived, or were about to depart, and 
everything had a busy and prosperous appearance. Sugar 
was the cause of the stir. Sugar is the potent elixir vita^ by 




o 

< 
< 

-1 




L..^ 



NILE SCENES 299 

which Egypt may recover her youth. The cane harvest 
was commencing when we passed up in December ; it would 
be finished, we were told, in a fortnight. During these 
months the mills are unceasingly crushing the canes and 
pressing out the juice. For the rest of the year sugar- 
making or sugar-growing fully employs the neighbouring 
population. 

In going up we were much struck by the signs of age 
shown by the mountains. Coming down, below Beni-Souef, 
these symptoms are still more noticeable. The Nile, shrunk 
among sand-banks, had lost the beauty inherent to it by virtue 
of its size and volume. The banks, grown up as the water 
had receded, shut out such view of the country as was be- 
fore exhibited, and in the part we now found ourselves the 
river resembled a muddy estuary rather than the Nile. But 
the Nile changes with the day. The beauty of Egypt is 
colour, and her colouring is exquisite. Take away the light 
and shade, the yellows, greens and reds peculiar to it, and the 
Nile becomes a muddy river, the banks ugly, the hills puny, 
and the desert a waste of sand. But let the sun shine out 
with its accustomed brilliancy, and the river is a sheet of 
silver ; the banks a frame one overlooks ; the hills grow 
into mountains and the yellow turns to gold. 

It was spring-time. The birds knew it, and made the 
most of it. Another sign of the times was seen in the de- 
parture of the " families " of the Cairene Pashas on their 
annual trip up Nile. 

The great men's wives apparently require change of air 



300 EGYPT 

in the spring for we met about this time several families on 
the river. There was a procession of three or four 
steamers, each towing dahabeahs, covered with guards and 
flags. The whole turnout was most magnificent, and at 
the same time dull, severe and proper. 

But very amusing was the family of a mudir. A single 
dahabeah contained it, but with such difficulty that the decks 
were covered with women and children, and the cabins were 
so crowded, that a beauty, more or less fat, more or less old, 
but all more or less painted, was bursting full blown out of 
every window. Dressed as they would be at home, with their 
faces and throats uncovered, we had, as we passed close by, 
an uncommon opportunity of seeing a harem. One strik- 
ingly pretty woman wore a most gorgeous dress of scarlet 
and gold, another had a very pretty gown of red and white 
stripes. 

Our last day in Upper Egypt was a charming one. 
There was a gentle southerly air, cool after the northern 
we had lately suffered ; but cool with the balmy softness 
peculiar to desert air. The sun shone out with Egyptian 
brilliancy, making deep the shadows and bright the light. 

Below Chobac is Bedreshein where antiquaries and men 
in health stop as the nearest point to Memphis. Between 
these two villages there is a lovely view for all. A reach, 
broad and long, runs down to Turah, with its quarries and 
forests of masts. Above and behind Turah stand some 
large government buildings, which show with great effect 
from the commanding position they have taken at the 



NILE SCENES 301 

extremity riverwards of the Turah Massarah hills. On 
the east lies the desert. On the west, a sloping green bank, 
broken here and there by large woods of palms. Behind 
these again, visible between or over them, stand the great 
Pyramids and the less imposing ones of Sakkara, Memphis 
and the Colossus. At the foot of the reach, Cairo suddenly 
comes into view. The capital of Egypt is seated like a 
bird on a hill, the whole of which it covers with outspread 
wings. The face of the mount now presented to us was a 
sheer abrupt descent. The buildings nestle to the very 
verge of the precipice ; below, no foot could rest, and there 
is nothing to detract from the boldness with which the city 
has, as it were, taken its perch. High above all stretches 
upwards the citadel, with the dome and minarets of its 
magnificent mosque. The grand site has been most hap- 
pily occupied, and suddenly seen as the city was by us, with 
the last rays of the evening light flitting over the buildings, 
and every line of the architecture clearly and sharply defined 
against the darkening sky, it appeared more like a dream of 
fairy-land, or a scene in a play, or a fiction of Turner's, than 
a real and living town. 



THE ASSOUAN DAM 

FRANK FAY ANT 

THE First Cataract of the mighty Nile, which has 
roared and thundered through the ages, has been 
taken captive by English engineers. From out 
of the red granite quarries, where the ancient Egyptians, by 
patient and persistent toil, hewed their eternal monuments, 
a million tons of stone have been taken to dam the cataract. 
For four years an army of men laboured to erect a great 
granite wall to bind the turbulent floods that rush 3,500 
miles through Africa from the Equatorial lakes to the 
Mediterranean. The cataract of seven thousand summers 
has been blotted off the world's map, and in its stead has 
been created, by the genius of Twentieth Century engineer- 
ing, a 'mighty reservoir, that sets back between the hills of 
Upper Egypt for two hundred miles, storing a milliard tons 
of water. 

And why have men toiled and spent millions of treasure 
to raise this mile-long wall in the heart of dried-up Egypt ? 
Without the Nile, Egypt would be as barren as the Great 
Desert. With the great river, fertile Egypt is but an 
elongated oasis, a thin green line on either side of the 
stream, from Alexandria up into the heart of Central 
Africa. This thin green line in the days of the ancients 



THE ASSOUAN DAM 303 

made Egypt the garden and granary of the world. And 
for thirty centuries men have struggled to widen this line. 
But all the mighty undertakings of the past — the building 
of dykes to bind the floods, the raising of great walls to 
hold them back, the digging of canals and basins to lead 
the water to the parched fields — have been but pigmy 
effects compared to this last work, which, at a single stroke, 
increases the national wealth by ^80,000,000. 

For water is gold to Egypt. In flood it rushes to the 
sea at the rate of fifteen thousand tons a second, and ten 
thousand men are called out to drive it on. But when 
the crops are growing, the Nile is but a brook coursing 
through the rocks, and the law lays rough hands on the 
peasant farmer who, under shadow of the night, dips out 
an extra bucketful of drink for his thirsty crops. Now 
modern engineering attempts to save some of the summer 
flood that the cotton and grain may not shrivel up in the 
torrid sun of the spring. It is cotton that makes modern 
Egypt a living land, for Egyptian cotton is known over the 
world as the best cotton grown. England has undertaken 
this great irrigation work in Egypt — of which the dam at 
Assouan and the new barrage at Assiout are but the be- 
ginning — because England is vitally interested in the cotton 
trade. With the impetus given to Egyptian industry by 
the great engineering now being developed, it will not be 
long before agricultural Europe will become manufacturing 
Egypt, and the long staple of the Nile Valley will be spun 
and woven in Egyptian mills by Egyptian labour. 



304 EGYPT 

English financiers have the strongest faith in the future 
of Egypt. For centuries Egypt was practically a bankrupt 
country, but under able English administration, the finances 
of Egypt have been placed on a solid foundation. The 
man w^ho may be well called the Financier of Egypt is Sir 
Ernest Cassel, whose greatest work in Egypt was the 
financing of the dam. For years Egyptian engineers have 
gone up and down the Nile Valley projecting on paper 
wonderful schemes of irrigation. Lakes have been formed, 
canals dug, and great barrages thrown across the river — ■ 
all on paper. All of these fine schemes, which proposed to 
turn the desert into a garden, were brought before the 
Egyptian Government, and the rulers applauded the engi- 
neers. But when it came to providing funds for the carry- 
ing out of these plans for the saving of Egypt, the govern- 
ment was silent. Although Egypt is now on a sound 
financial footing, its financial arrangements are most 
chaotic. Nominally the vassal state of the Sultan of 
Turkey, the independence of Egypt is guaranteed by the 
Powers j but the financial administration is practically 
controlled by England. When Sir Benjamin Baker, the 
distinguished English engineer, placed before the Egyptian 
Government a plan for the damming of the Nile at two 
points — six hundred, and two hundred and fifty miles, 
respectively — above Cairo, the government gave its ap- 
proval to the scheme, which involved the expenditure of 
several millions sterling. But the government was not 
able to pay for the work, except by small payments ex- 



THE ASSOUAN DAM 305 

tending over a long period of years, and not beginning till 
the dams were in actual operation. 

Undaunted, Sir Benjamin Baker went to his friend. Sir 
Ernest Cassel, and told him that several millions sterling 
were needed to dam the Nile. The engineer assured the 
banker that the project would be of inestimable benefit to 
Egypt, and that the two dams would rapidly pay for them- 
selves in the greatly increased revenue they would bring to 
the Egyptian Government in water taxes. It did not take 
the banker long to decide. Four days later, a contract had 
been signed with Sir John Aird, probably the greatest 
contractor in England, to build the two dams within five 
years. 

The dam at Assouan is a dam such as was never pro- 
jected before. To build a great wall across an ordinary 
stream is merely a matter of labour, but to throw up a 
dam in the heart of a Nile cataract is a daring engineering 
undertaking. 

" We had no idea of the difficulties we were to meet," 
said Sir Benjamin Baker, in describing the work at Assouan. 
" We were greatly hampered in the work at the beginning 
because of the uncertainties of the river bed. We had to 
crush one turbulent channel after another, to enable our 
thousands of workmen to go down into the bed of the 
river to excavate for the foundation. This work ha<l to be 
done at High Nile to enable us to begin excavating as soon 
as the Nile subsided. In closing a channel, we first threw 
ton after ton of granite blocks into the cataract, and then 



3o6 EGYPT 

we pitched in trainloads of rock, trucks and all. Gradually 
the rubble mound rose above the surface of the water. 
After the flood had subsided we banked this rock wall 
with many thousand bags of sand. What a task we had 
to get those bags ! We used eight million, and we had to 
search all Europe for them. When the floods rose again, 
we anxiously watched the excavation ditch protected by 
these walls of rock and sand bags. We had a score of 
great pumps ready to draw out the water should it rush in, 
but so well had our sudds been constructed that two pumps 
were as many as we needed. 

" When we finally got to work in earnest in the bed of 
the river, we found the task was a more formidable one 
than we had imagined. The rock in many places was 
such as no engineer would think of building a dam upon. 
It was rotten rock that crumbled into sand under the pick. 
We worked down yard after yard looking for solid rock, 
and in some places we had to go forty feet below the bed 
of the river to find it. This enormous excavation greatly 
increased the cost of the work. When I saw that we 
would practically have to excavate a deep ditch through the 
river bed to get to solid rock, I told Lord Cromer I did not 
know how much it would cost, but it would be done. 
Lord Cromer said, ' Go ahead ! ' " 

The work was carried on night and day through the 
winter and sprmg before the flood came rushing into the 
valley. An army of native labour was thrown into the 
ditch. At one time thirteen thousand men were at work 



THE ASSOUAN DAM 307 

on the Assouan dam. Despite the engineering difficulties, 
the work was completed a year ahead of time.^ 

' Assouan is a winter resort rather than an archaeological centre : its cli- 
mate, especially during December and January, is perhaps the most perfect 
in the world ; the air is dry and invigorating to a wonderful degree, and 
the temperature is scarcely ever too low or too high. The scenery is 
quite different from that of the rest of Egypt : there are no cotton-fields or 
canals, there is nothing but the town, the Island of Elephantine, and the 
gray sand and granite of the Arabian Desert, separated from the golden 
slopes of the Libyan Hills by the river that winds and streaks in and out 
of curious black rocks and then divides past the island, opening below 
it to a wide reach of water peopled with tiny pleasure-boats and an occa- 
sional tourist steamer. 

The town is unusually clean, and its bazaars are picturesque : they are 
full of every sort of Sudanese produce, armour and weapons, beads, fly- 
whisks, quaint leathern " bottels " and vessels, and hippopotamus-hide 
sticks and courbashes past all counting. To the east of the town is the 
Bishareen Camp, a conglomeration of disreputable tents where dwell the 
nomads of the Eastern desert, with their sheep and goats and their famous 
breed of camels. They are a curious race, with their shocks of long, 
shaggy hair, their fierce eyes, and their scant regard for clothing. 

There is a certain fascination, not only in the climate and scenery, but 
in the " atmosphere " of Assouan. For one thing, it is quite unlike the 
usual dirty noisy Egyptian town : it is a frontier city, a borderland be- 
tween two races — the Egyptians and the Nubians or Berberines — who, 
for all their relations with one another, have never mingled. Its other 
feature is the spirit of organization that seems to prevail, witness the suc- 
cession of dances, picnics, gymkhanas, sailing matches, games of donkey 
polo, tennis and golf tournaments, and almost every known form of amuse- 
ment. Perhaps the secret of this is that most visitors who go to Assouan 
return there year after year and stay for a long period : at any rate, every 
one seems to know, or to be quite ready to know, every one else. 

The following are the chief objects of interest : Elephantine Island, the 
Rock Tombs and the Convent of St. Simeon on the west bank, the Eastern 
and the Southern Quarries, the Dam and Philse. 

Apart from its beauty, the Island of Elephantine is well worth explor- 
ing. Not only are there the ruins of an ancient Nilometer and several 
temples, but discoveries made lately by M. Clermont-Ganneau have es- 
tablished (this he suspected from the evidence of various Aramaic papyri) 



3o8 EGYPT 

that, about five hundred years before the commencement of the Christian 
era, there existed here a Jewish town. 

The history of Assouan, that was Syene, is the history of its rocks. For 
it was from these rocks that the slaves of the Pharaohs cut and shaped the 
great monoliths and statues for many a mighty temple : indeed, it was from 
Syene that all the red granite came. It was extracted by such primitive 
methods as were known to those days ; in some cases wooden wedges 
were driven into the rock, and then soaked with water, and as they swelled 
the rock split and was detached from its bed. Then after being shaped 
it was floated down the river in barges or rafts, then dragged by thousands 
of slaves on vast sledges to its resting-place of honour in some far northern 
shrine. The proof is still visible : there is an obelisk, and there are two 
statues in these quarries, unfinished. One of the statues is half-excavated, 
and one face of the stone is still unsevered from the mother-rock. The 
two principal quarries lie to the southeast of Assouan and on the road to 
Shellal, though for that matter almost all the tract between Assouan and 
Shellal on the east bank is quarry land. 

Naturally every visitor to Assouan will choose his own time and method 
for seeing Philse and the Dam ; it is possible to make two separate ex- 
cursions or to combine both places in one journey, to go or return by 
train, donkey or boat. At any rate, one form of expedition — which we 
describe here — is well worth doing ; it is as follows : ride to Shellal, 
which takes an hour, take a boat to Philae and then down to the Dam, 
walk across the Dam, or if that is not possible, row to the west end, then 
pass through the lock and take another boat down the Cataract to Assouan. 
For those who ride, the route is direct along a broad track that was once a 
Roman road ; before that it was the way down which the quarried stones 
were borne. Long, long before that it was the ancient course of the river: 
to right and to left are the massed boulders of granite, and here and there 
is an inscription on some great stone recording the passage of this or that 
king or general or governor. On the right hand, between the granite 
mounds, are occasional stretches of the massive mud brick wall that pos- 
sibly the Pharaohs, but more probably the Copts, built to protect the riverain 
villages from the raids of the savage desert tribes. As you go southwards 
the granite on either side converges more and more and then suddenly 
withdraws and discloses the wide open plain of Shellal : in front are the 
huts of various workmen, to the southwest are the hovels of Shellal and 
the small, white railway station, and beyond it, over the water, the pale 
stones of Philae. 

Before all things it should be remembered that Philae is not and never 



THE ASSOUAN DAM 309 

will be totally submerged. At present a goodly part of it is out of water 
throughout the year ; when the raising of the Dam is complete, there will 
only remain the^pylons and the top of the Birth-chamber : but this will be 
only the case when the reservoir is full, from the beginning of December 
to the end of May. From June to the end of November Philce will be as 
it always has been, high and dry and clear of the water. Of course the 
picturesque setting is no more, the mimosa and other shrubs have been 
washed away, the few remaining palm-trees are dying, the island is changed, 
but the temple will remain as it was for many a generation. 

As a temple, or, strictly speaking, as a group of temples, Philas has no 
supreme archaeological interest : it is late Ptolemaic and Grseco-Roman ; 
in plan it has even more than the inconsistent elaborateness of Kom- 
Ombo or Edfou. In fact, no monument is easier to belittle and condemn 
than Philse — for those who have not seen it. But when you do see it, 
when you examine the capitals in the colonnades, the colour and design 
in the hypostyle hall, when your eye and imagination are held by the Isis 
and the Hathor on the pylon — when you are writhin sight of the Birth- 
chamber-^then you realize Philse. 

The Parthenon at Athens is a great monument standing on high in a 
perfect place, but the Parthenon cannot outdo the Birth-chamber, and all its 
detail and all its beauty cannot excel those few frail architraves and 
slender pillars. Phila; is no mere record, it is an ideal. 

Just after leaving Philae the boat passes a curious rock — two rounded 
cones and a depression between them — known as Pharaoh's Seat : then 
the cliffs advance from either side, and beyond them is the great open 
sheet of water bounded only by the distant desert hills and the dam — that 
mile and a quarter of uncompromising stern masonry, a challenge of 
science to nature. A wonderful challenge indeed, for it " holds up " the 
Nile for over one hundred miles ; it regulates, at the will of its engineer, 
all the flow from Assouan to the north, and it gives water to the whole 
land when it is required. The present height of the dam is one hundred 
and thirty-seven feet, and it is to be raised yet another seventeen feet. 
This will increase the water storage to a great extent, though at the same 
time it will practically submerge not only Philse but a large part of Nubia. 
However, all possible provision has been made : the various temples have 
been most carefully strengthened, and the villagers are to receive liberal 
compensation for the few crops they lose. 

The view down stream is strange and picturesque : the houses of the 
engineers and workmen form a village set in trees and rocks. The river, 
now no longer a river, steals where it may, in slender agitated streams. 



3IO EGYPT 

between boulders : a few sluices only are open to it and through these it 
roars in a blinding, hurtling whirl of strength released, a white and green 
fury of unconstrained water. 

After leaving the lock, the boat is steered at right angles into the rapids, 
down fierce eddies and past deadly-looking reefs and rocks, and at length 
into smooth open water. It all seems most dangerous, but there is no 
reason for fear : the Nubians are born boatmen and they know the Cata- 
ract as they know the palm of their hand. 

The boat then glides past islets of black rock glistening by reason of 
their coating of manganese, past sandy beaches^that lead to inlets of ver- 
dure that suggest anything but Egypt. Now and again you pass a small 
skiff; near the bank are women washing their jars in the water ; round a 
corner the hotel appears, the boat steals between the smooth black rocks 
that are silent and unobtrusive as' sleepy sea-lions, and then reaches the 
landing-stage and the end of the journey.— £^///<2Ka? How to See It (1910). 



NUBIAN SKETCHES 

FREDERIC EDEN 

THE approach to Assouan is particularly picturesque. 
For some miles previously, a consciousness of a 
change in scenery and colouring had been creep- 
ing over us. The sand was becoming vjrarmer in its tone ; 
and the rocks, dark and calcined looking, were the rocks of 
Nubia, not of Egypt. Each hundred miles of southern 
progress makes itself felt, but about Assouan there is a still 
more marked alteration, and one seems to have stepped at 
once from a temperate into a tropical country. The fiercer 
and straighter rays of the sun leave a deeper impress on 
everything they touch. 

Sak'tas, too, the Nubian water-wheels, make their first 
appearance on the scene, announcing a change of country 
and of customs. We were in the land of irrigation. As 
flint and steel, when brought in contact, set tinder all afire, 
the sun and Nile, when made to act together, give all-pro- 
ducing power to Egypt. Wherever the river flows, and 
wherever its water permeates, there is verdure and fertility, 
food and life. Beyond the influence of the quickening 
element is sterile sand and barren waste. 

Away from the Nile bank the Egyptians convey the en- 
riching water by various means. There are canals such as 



312 EGYPT 

the Bahr-el-Yussuf, very rivers from their sources, that 
spread their arms like the branches of some giant tree, till 
their strength is spent, and the last drop they carry is licked 
up by the thirsty soil. Their course is marked through the 
land by villages and towns, by flocks and herds, by corn and 
dates, and by cotton and sugar plantations. 

A more primitive instrument of irrigation—perhaps one 
of the oldest of mechanical contrivances — is the pole and 
bucket of the shadoof. In Egypt it is universally used, and 
in construction is most simple. An upright, say eight or 
nine feet high, is fixed in the bank. On it a long pole is 
balanced. At the short and inshore end is a lump of clay 
equal in vi^eight to the bucket w^hen full of water that hangs 
on the longer and river arm. The peasant standing in 
front, depresses the bucket till it fills, then by the 
aid of the earthen weight, he lifts it to the level of 
his chest, and by the same action empties it into a trough, 
that carries the water backward to the land, or to another 
and another shadoof that will raise it to the necessary level. 
The shadoofs are worked in pairs, and we saw once as many 
as six pairs ranged in tiers on landings one above the other. 
Each man made an average of eight lifts a minute. How 
many myriads of gallons must be thus drawn annually from 
the Nile ? 

The sakia^ a. more lazy method for obtaining the same end, 
is Nubian. A wheel, enclosed in a tower, is placed on the 
summit of the bank. A palm-fibre band encircles it and 
lowers and raises, as the wheel revolves, a number of 




■^^aiSkV^Y^ 





A SAKIA, NUBIA 



NUBIAN SKETCHES 313 

eaithern pots into a conduit beneath, that leads the water to 
it from the Nile. The whole is like a rough dredging 
machine, working perpendicularly and raising water instead 
of mud. Ensconced in the shade of the tower the idle 
owner sits and flogs his working-beast — cow, ass, or camel. 

Coming into Nubia we had entered upon a fresh scene. 
The people, the country, and even the climate were new to 
us. The last was hotter and softer than we had left j per- 
fectly enjoyable, but not so stimulating ; cofFee and tobacco 
seemed the natural pastime of the hour and it became some- 
what of an exertion to eat one's dinner. 

The country's aspect was much changed by the substitu- 
tion of granite and syenite for lime and sandstone, a change 
which begins just below Assouan, but is not seen in bulk 
until Philae is reached. Another new feature, of greater 
importance to the beauty of the landscape, was that the 
banks of the river had become less high and more sloping. 
In Egypt, one sees, as a rule, the bank and the mountains 
behind, — the immediate fore and the distant background. 
In Nubia, the view embraces also the middle distance. 
The river, too, was straighter in its course, inclining to the 
right or left in gentle curves and slight inflections, rather 
than with the rectangular bends that in Egypt rarely permit 
more than a mile or two of the Nile to be seen at once, and 
often made us think that we were sailing in a saucer, from 
which there was no outlet. 

In the people the change is no less great : in race, in man- 
ner, colour, hair, voice and language they are distinct. 



314 EGYPT 

The dress, too, was different, always in shape, often in 
material. 

The women were remarkably handsome in figure. 
Their beautifully rounded arms and magnificent busts were 
set off by the fashion of their clothes. One arm and 
shoulder was free and uncovered ; the folds or long sheet of 
cotton, which composed the dress, were caught from front 
and back on the other shoulder and fastened by a silver 
ornament; the centre part was wrapped loosely round the 
body, and the ends were used at will, now as veils, now 
thrown round the neck or suffered to hang down as they 
fell. But their features were less pleasing than those of the 
Egyptian women. They tattoo their faces, plaster their hair 
with a mass of castor oil and mud, and their whole persons 
reek so much of this product of the country, that even the 
silver rings and bracelets they offer for sale are unbearable 
until they have been again washed and rewashed. 

We entered a gorge where the mountains pressed on the 
river from either side and reduced its breadth at the throat 
to perhaps 200 yards. At the southern or up-stream end of 
the gorge stands Kalabsheh. The ruins are of some size 
and more beauty, and a line of grand sycamores grows be- 
tween them and the river. Immediately above this the 
scenery is less attractive, the hills are more regular, monot- 
onous in colour and uniform in shape; but the great river, 
pouring down to meet you in fine reaches and grand curves, 
is ever admirable. The changes on the bank, too, were 
frequent. The corn-fields, trees and villages repeatedly 



NUBIAN SKETCHES 315 

gave way to the barren desert, which ever and again had 
forced its way between rich fields of plenty and poured its 
hungry sand into the very Nile. 

Then Dakka was reached, and once more we entered a 
country rich to live in and interesting to see. Numerous 
villages, standing on the bare hills beneath the mountains 
looked upon the green corn and palm plantations that lay 
between them and the river. These mountains were most 
picturesque in form, position and colour. Pyramidal in 
shape and dark in hue they stand detached from each other, 
each in his own bed of golden sand ; and we could not help 
thinking that they might have served as the models of the 
great Pyramids of Gizeh, so nearly did they resemble those 
unsolved problems. Was it possible that in times unknown 
to history, and untold of, even by tradition, some wave of 
invasion had swept from south to north ; and that the con- 
querors of the rich plains of Lower Egypt, weary of the 
dead level and comparative uniformity of the Cairene flat, 
had sought to imitate the hills of their native country, and 
by the hands of the vanquished race built up the Pyramids 
— at once a monument of their greatness and a witness to 
their love of home. 

The sunsets of Egypt are nearly always beautiful, and the 
after-glow especially is of surpassing loveliness. But the 
sunsets of this part of Nubia as far excel those of Egypt, as 
the sunsets of the Riviera exceed in beauty any we see in 
England. Who can describe the softness of tone, what 
words can paint the gorgeous nature of their colouring ! 



3i6 EGYPT 

The afternoon before we reached Sabooa, we chanced to 
stop in a reach that ran east and west. Some light fleecy 
clouds floated in the western heaven, and extended overhead 
in small flecks larger than big snowflakes. When the sun 
was below the horizon these clouds were dyed with shade 
upon shade of colour the most brilliant and glorious conceiv- 
able. To the north, the bank, somewhat thicker, was of a 
deep plum-colour ; to the west the clouds, rippled like the 
sands of the sea, were of a brilliant ruby red, with an under- 
lining and lower skirt of golden orange. Above our heads 
and to the east, these various hues were reflected again and 
again, and the river acted as a gigantic mirror of Venetian 
glass, stained orange, red and purple. In the south Nature, 
that greatest of artists, threw in as a contrast the sobriety of 
that limpid blue, so soft, so clear and translucent, so full of 
repose and yet so bright that out of it there seems to come 
forth light, — that blue which is only found on the tops of 
mountains, or in those desert countries where the air is so 
pure as scarcely to restrain the sight, or have power to fill 
and swell the lungs. 

On the twenty-first we reached Korosco, something more 
than one hundred miles distant from Philae. From Korosco 
the great road to Shendy and Sennar leads across the desert 
in almost a due southerly direction, and rejoins the Nile be- 
tween the fourth and fifth cataracts at Abou Hamed. The 
river in the interval has made a great bend to the westward, 
and has in retracement of its steps run southward no less 
than a degree and a half. Most of the caravans to and from 



NUBIAN SKETCHES 317 

the south start therefore from Korosco and we found the 
banks of the town well lined with merchandise. 

The Nile between Korosco and Derr changes its usual 
direction and runs southeast, so that to ascend this part of 
the river the boats have to turn their heads in the teeth of 
the prevailing wind. The distance between the two towns 
is about fifteen miles ; the channel is impeded by numerous 
rocks and sand-banks. 

On the twenty-fifth we ran by Abou-Simbel and slept 
only thirty miles below Wadi-Halfa. The next day the 
breeze continued and we reached the term of our voyage. 

Wadi-Halfa is a very disappointing place. We had 
read of long rows of camels and asses, of crowds of Arabs 
and Barabras ; we had even been told to expect large bazaars 
stuffed with every kind of Soudan produce, stretched on 
either side of the river, and affording a more perfect southern 
African picture than any we had yet seen. We found a 
sandy island and another strip of sand that was not an 
island. Moored to these were a dozen dahabeahs. One or 
two stray camels, half a dozen donkeys prepared with 
saddles for hawagers and a single heap of barley were all 
that was visible of bazaars, beasts or merchandise. So we 
moored on the sandy strip, a little apart from the not exten- 
sive crowd, got out our tent, and laid under it, ruminating 
on the many faults in books of travel. 

The cataract above Wadi-Halfa is said to be well worth 
seeing, as is also a view southward, from a hilltop close by. 
But neither could be reached except on a donkey. So giving 



3i8 EGYPT 

but a single day for the arrangement of our boat, we com- 
menced on the 28th January our return voyage. Having 
sailed up the Nile we then sailed down again. 

Leaving Haifa at 7 a. m. we reached Abou-Simbel at 9 
p. M. We passed a day at Abou-Simbel. The ruins, as 
they are called, though the term is scarcely applicable to 
two temples hewn in the solid rock, and almost in a perfect 
state of repair, are the most interesting in Nubia. 

Abou-Simbel is by far the hottest place I have ever been 
in. The rock in which the great temple is excavated faces 
east and south. It is set in a bed of yellow red sand, that 
stores up and gives out the rays of the sun, so that even at 
night the air coming from it is hot as the blast of a furnace. 

In coming down we were charmed with the beauty of 
the river from above Ibreem to Sabooa. The Nile here ex- 
hibits in a large measure the contrasts and richness of 
colour which form the chief charm of African scenery. 
The river bank of vivid green, fringed and sometimes 
broken by the yellow red sand of the desert ; the dark moun- 
tains of granite syenite, or sandstone, rising from out of this 
bright bed of sand ; the palms of a glassy emerald hue, the 
castor oil plant of olive, the sky of wondrous hue ; and the 
river, here reflecting the rays of the sun, like ripples of bur- 
nished steel, there giving back the orange sand or the 
cobalt sky, — present a picture that such a master as Turner 
would have longed to paint and despaired to render. 

In one place near Ibreem, soon after the date groves for 
which it is famous had been passed, we came upon a very 



NUBIAN SKETCHES 319 

arid scene, and were much struck by the similarity that 
exists between two such dissimilar things as the sand of the 
desert and the snow of the Alps. In shape the hills we 
were looking upon much resembled the crest of an Alpine 
ridge, and the sand that lay amongst them coating the peaks 
and filling the hollows, was in position and lie marvellously 
like drift snow and glaciers. Precisely as a black rock rises 
in Switzerland from a snowy bed, crops out in Africa a 
granite boulder from a drift of sand. So too with the tracks. 
The effect of a footstep in the snow or sand is identical. 
As we looked at the trail left by a number of camels we 
saw passing over the shoulders of these hills, it required the 
sight of the animals and the colour of the sand to convince 
us that it was not on snow that the tracks were made. 

The two great beauties of Nile scenery are the Nile 
itself and the colouring. In both these elements Nubia 
excels. The short bends of Egypt can no more compare 
with the noble reaches of Nubia than can the colour and 
light of the northern country with that of the southern. 
The sand, for instance, of the one is to the other as the 
auburn-gold hair of an English girl to the flaxen hue of the 
German. Then the sunsets ! but of these enough has 
been said. 

In two respects, however, the comparison now attempted 
is against Nubia. There is in it an absence of life. Boats 
are scarce, and an occasional vulture or a solitary hawk 
were poor substitutes for the abundance of birds seen 
lower down the river. We gladly welcomed the wagtails 



320 EGYPT 

and swallows, the plovers and storks, the ducks and geese, 
the sandpipers of many kinds, and hawks of all sorts, as 
well as the fleets of native boats, when we got amongst 
them again. Then the Egyptian is quiet, modest and 
well-mannered, as compared with the Nubian ; he is 
peculiarly sweet, and the other reeks of castor oil. 




ABOU-SIMBEL 

SIR I. GARDNER WILKINSON 

T Abou-Simbel are the most interesting remains 
met with in Nubia, and, excepting Thebes, 
throughout the whole valley of the Nile. It has 
two temples hewn in the gritstone rock, both of the time 
of Rameses the Great ; which, besides their grandeur, 
contain highly finished sculptures, and throw great light on 
the history of that conqueror. 

The small temple was dedicated to Hathor, who is repre- 
sented in the adytum under the form of the sacred cow, 
her emblem, which also occurs in the pictures on the wall. 
Her title here is Lady of Aboshek (Aboccis), the ancient 
name of Abou-Simbel ; which, being in the country of the 
Ethiopians, is followed in the hieroglyphics by the sign 
signifying " foreign land." The facade is adorned with 
several statues in prominent relief of the king and the 
deities ; and the interior is divided into a hall of six square 
pillars bearing the head of Hathor, a transverse corridor, 
with a small chamber at each extremity and an adytum. 
Among the contemplar deities are Re, Amunre, Isis and 
Ptah ; and Kneph, Sate, and Anouke, the triad of the 
cataracts. The monarch is frequently accompanied by his 
queen Nofretari. The total depth of this excavation is 
about ninety feet from the door. 



322 EGYPT 

The exterior of the great temple is remarkable for the 
most beautiful of all Egyptian colossi. They represent 
Rameses II. They are seated on thrones attached to the 
rock, and the faces of some of them, which are fortunately 
well preserved, evince a beauty of expression the more 
striking as it is unlooked for in statues of such dimensions. 
Their total height is about sixty-six feet, without the 
pedestal. The ear measures three feet five inches, fore- 
finger (i. (?., to the fork of middle finger) three feet j from 
inner side of elbow joint to end of middle finger, fifteen 
feet, etc. 

The total height of the facade of the temple may be 
between ninety and one hundred feet. About 1830 Mr. 
Hay cleared to the base of the two colossi on the south 
side of the door. He also exposed to view the curious 
Greek inscription of the Ionian and Carian soldiers of 
Psammetichus, first discovered by Mr. Bankes and Mr. 
Salt, as well as some interesting hieroglyphic tablets. 

That inscription is of very great interest upon several 
accounts. It appears to have been written by the troops 
sent by the Egyptian king after the deserters, who are 
said by Herodotus to have left the service of Psammetichus. 

From this it appears that the " King Psammetichus " 
only went as far as Elephantine, and sent his troops after 
the deserters by the river into Upper Ethiopia. 

Besides this inscription are others written by Greeks 
who probably visited this place at a later time; as " Theo- 
pompus, the son of Plato " ; Ptolemy, the son of Timos- 




RAMESES THE GREAT AT ABOU SIMBEL 



ABOU-SIMBEL 323 

tratus, Ktesibius, Telephus, and others. There are also 
some Phoenician inscriptions on the same colossus, which 
is the first on the left as you approach the door of the 
temple. 

The grand hall is supported by eight Osiride pillars, 
and to it succeed a second hall of four square pillars, a 
corridor, and the adytum, with two side chambers. Eight 
other rooms open on the grand hall, but they are very 
irregularly excavated, and some of them have lofty benches 
projecting from the walls. In the centre of the adytum is 
an altar, and at the upper end are four statues in relief. 
The dimensions of the colossi attached to the pillars in the 
great hall are — from the shoulder to the elbow four feet 
six inches ; from the elbow to the wrist four feet three 
inches ; from the nose to the chin eight inches ; the ear 
thirteen and three-quarter inches j the nose, about ten 
inches ; the face nearly two feet ; and the total height 
without the cap and pedestal, seventeen feet eight inches. 

The principal objects of the interior are the historical 
subjects relating to the conquests of Rameses 11. , repre- 
sented in the great hall. A large tablet, containing the 
date of his first year, extends over great part of the north 
wall; and another between the two last pillars on the 
opposite side of this hall, of his thirty-fifth year, has been 
added long after the temple was completed. The battle 
scenes are very interesting. Among the various subjects 
are the arks of the Egyptians, which they carried with 
them in their foreign expeditions, and very similar to the 



324 EGYPT 

one represented at Luxor. The subjects on the south 
wall are particularly spirited. 

Ra (the Sun) was the god of the temple and the pro- 
tector of the place. 

In the niche over the entrance is a statue of this deity 
in relief, to whom the king is offering a figure of Truth ; 
and he is one of the four at the end of the adytum. The 
Theban triad also holds a conspicuous place here, as well 
as Nou, or Kneph, Khem, Osiris and Isis. The total 
depth of this excavation from the door is about two hun- 
dred feet, without the colossi and slope of the facade j and 
a short distance to the south are some hieroglyphic tablets 
on the rock bearing the date of the thirty-eighth year of the 
same Rameses. 

The great temple of Abou-Simbel was formerly quite 
closed by the sand that pours down from the hills above. 
The first person who observed these two interesting monu- 
ments was Burckhardtj and in 1817, Belzoni, Captains 
Irby and Mangles and Mr. Beechey, visited them and 
resolved on clearing the entrance of the larger temple from 
the sand. After working eight hours a day for a whole 
fortnight with the average heat of the thermometer from 
112° to 116° Fahrenheit , in the shade, they succeeded in 
gaining admittance ; and, though the sand closed in again, 
their labours enabled others to penetrate into it without 
much difficulty. 



ABOU-SIMBEL AND THE SECOND 
CATARACT 

FILLIERS STUART 

I STARTED across the desert. The sun, as it rose, 
threw its first rays upon the colossal figures of 
Rameses, who sit on guard like gigantic sentries be- 
fore the great rock temple of Abou-Simbel ; they are visible 
from a distance of several miles, and it took me nearly two 
hours to reach them from the time they first came into view. 
I descended upon the temples down the steep glacier-like 
bed of golden sand which, also glacier fashion, is ever 
moving on, slowly but irresistibly engulfing everything in its 
route. It has once before buried these huge monuments, 
including the colossal figures sixty-six feet high, and in a 
few years, if left to itself, will have buried them again. 

Memorials of Rameses occur in abundance all along the 
valley of the Nile, but nowhere are so many mementos of 
him gathered together as at Abou-Simbel. Here his whole 
life in all its various phases is depicted ; beside him is the 
temple of his first and most beloved Queen Nofretari ; at 
his knees and between his feet stand his sons and daughters ; 
on the walls are perpetuated the memory of his battles, his 
sieges, his headlong chariot charge, his acts of devotion to 
the Gods ; the details of his camp life, the dress, arms and 
accoutrements of his soldiers, and the most carefully 



326 EGYPT 

executed portraits of himself, as well as the most impressive 
specimen of his architectural achievements, the world- 
famed Rock-Temple, from the facade of which the Napo- 
leon of ancient times still gazes upon us, the fire of 
haughty pride still lights up those eyes of stone, and the 
broad brow still proclaims to us his commanding genius 
and iron strength of will. 

The first view of this wonderful facade is a sight never 
to be forgotten. It ranks in one's memory with one's first 
view of Naples, or Mont Blanc, or Niagara. I think it is 
even more impressive, coming upon it suddenly out of the 
desert than if approached by way of the river. A master- 
piece of human art amid a scene of desolation. 

Beside the Great Temple of Rameses, there is on one 
side a smaller one built by his Queen Nofretari, as a memo- 
rial of her love for her honoured husband ; and on the other 
side a much smaller temple, dedicated to Thoth, the god of 
letters. This last is conjectured to have been the priests' 
library. If so it cannot have been much used, for when 
opened in 1874 its fresco paintings were as fresh in colour 
as if it had only just been excavated ; and it must have been 
buried in the sand almost from the day it was completed. 

The smaller temple, dedicated to Rameses by his queen, 
is a monument of the romantic love and affection which 
prevailed between the royal pair, and is interesting on that 
account. The numerous portraits of Queen Nofretari 
which it contains show that she was very beautiful, and 
they indicate also a strength of character and purpose which 



ABOU-SIMBEL 327 

accounts for the hold which she retained upon her hus- 
band's affections to the last. Her name signifies " the good 
companion " — a model name for a wife. Outside this 
temple are four colossi, two of the queen and two of the 
king, with their children at their feet. Both the colossi of 
the queen have been much damaged, perhaps by her suc- 
cessor, the Khetan princess, whom Rameses married after 
Nofretari's death. Enough still remains to give one an idea 
of her full face, and which confirms the impression of beauty 
and sweetness of expression conveyed by the painted 
intaglios within the temple. She wears on her head the 
coronet which was the distinguishing ornament of royal 
princesses. On her brow is the asp, which it is the 
peculiar prerogative of reigning sovereigns and their con- 
sorts to wear. Her hood fringed with gold is surmounted 
by the vulture, the emblem of maternity. 

The smaller temple contains paintings of several god- 
desses. Some of them are very pretty, and must have been 
drawn from living models ; perhaps the queen made her 
maids of honour sit for them. 

This temple was evidently excavated much earlier than 
the great one near by. Rameses and his fair spouse were 
in their prime ; their children were quite young. 

January 12th (Sunday). We read service in the Great 
Temple amid impressive surroundings. All about us were 
the varied deities of Egyptian mythology : lion-headed, ape- 
headed, ibis-headed, eagle-headed, jackal-headed. From 
out the deep shadows of the vast subterranean hall started 



328 EGYPT 

the giant forms of the stone colossi at whose feet we sat. 
The first lesson was singularly appropriate, Isaiah^ chapter 
XLIV., in which the vanity of graven images and of human 
pride is alike denounced. 

Before service was quite over the steamer arrived. We 
sailed all day and most of the night and arrived at 1 1 a. m. 
on the 13th at the foot of the Second Cataract.' 

We manned our boat with a picked crew, and set out on 
our exploring expedition up the Cataract ; it can be ascended 
by dint of hard work and skillful management about half 
way. The Ultima Thule is a singular rock which rises per- 
pendicularly from beside the tortured waters and overhangs 
them, giving a splendid bird's-eye view of the ten miles of 
rapids and falls which constitute the Second Cataract. I 
landed at one point and came upon an old Coptic church, 
still so perfect that it could scarcely be called a ruin. The 
walls were covered with paintings of saints and angels, and 

1 The country between Abou-Simbel and WadiHalfa is uninteresting, 
rather flat, rather fertile, rather Egyptian. Wadi-Halfa looks like any river- 
side town in the Delta — Kafr-Zayat, for example — until you land. Then 
you discover that whatever may be its aspect, the atmosphere is different. 

The real interest of Wadi-Halfa is the Second Cataract, some five miles 
up-stream ; the expedition can be made partly by boat and partly by 
donkey, or, better still, altogether by boat. It is a reproduction on a great 
scale of the First Cataract of Assouan : everywhere are large black rocks 
and smalls islands fringed with brown tufted papyrus reeds and shaded by 
big mimosa bushes ; there is just sufficient mirage in the air to give the ef- 
fect of a vast open country, well-wooded and undulating. In the far 
southern distance can be imagined, rather than actually discerned, the 
faint blue outlines of the Dongola hills. And above all stands the sheer 
scarp of the rock of Abou-Sir, dominating the land as far as the eye can 
reach. It is a wonderful panorama. — £^gyf* and How to See It (1910). 



ABOU-SIMBEL 329 

with several life-size frescoes of St. George and the Dragon. 
It is curious how constantly the oldest of things, are dished 
up again under a new disguise. The original of St. George 
and the Dragon is the ensign of an ancient Egyptian city, 
which viewed the crocodile as an emblem of the evil one, 
and adopted, as their favourite sculpture, an Egyptian hero 
transfixing that reptile with a spear. 

The trip up the rapids was very interesting. The scenery 
is quite different from the First Cataract; not nearly so 
picturesque. It consisted of hundreds of islands and rocks 
scattered over the whole width of the river-bed, which here 
expands to at least a mile and a half. These islets are deco- 
rated with stunted mimosa bushes, gum-trees and an 
occasional date-palm ; but what it lacks in picturesqueness 
it makes up for as a cataract. It is in some places a succes- 
sion of falls — at one point equalling SchafFhausen on 
the Rhine in height. I walked along way beyond Abooseer 
and ascended a mountain, from the summit of which I had 
a splendid view of the entire length of the rapids, extending 
over nearly ten miles ; I saw a range of high black clifFs 
above the falls and the broad expanse of the Nile, as smooth 
as a lake, at their feet. This is the manner and custom of 
all rivers ; there is always an interval of lake-like tran- 
quillity before they engage in the turmoil and conflict that 
awaits them presently. It is so at Niagara and at other falls 
I have ever seen. The atmosphere was so clear that the 
high mountains of Dongola, distant 150 miles, were cut 
hard and sharp against the southern horizon, betraying their 



330 EGYPT 

distance by their microscopic proportions, but not by any 
mistiness of outline. I returned to Abooseer by the caravan 
route. It was Uttered with the remains of camels, some en- 
tire skeletons, others dried up into huge mummies, their 
skin stretched over their hoop-like ribs as tight as the parch- 
ment of a drum. It was significant that their heads were 
all turned towards the north. They had toiled across the 
waterless desert from the far distant Soudan to drop ex- 
hausted, famished and consumed with thirst within a few 
hours of their journey's end. 

Abooseer is about half way through the cataract, and our 
boat had been hauled up to that point with much toil and 
difficulty, but the return journey was very exciting work as 
we shot through one rapid after another, and had many 
hair-breadth escapes from sunken rocks. On the northern- 
most of the hundreds of islands amongst which the Nile im- 
patiently tears its way here, there are ruins of an ancient 
fortified town ; it formed the garrison of this part of the 
valley in the days of the Pharaohs, and some of its tall 
towers still stand almost perfect, and form very picturesque 
objects. 

While at the Second Cataract we observed the Southern 
Cross for the first time. It is a beautiful constellation ; 
when it first rises it appears in a reclining position with its 
left limb downwards, lying on its side with its head towards 
the east, but by degrees it erects itself upright like a true 
cross, and finally falls over on the other side with its head 
towards the west, and so sinks below the horizon. 



A RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT 

DR. C. B. KLUNZINGER 

WE take leave of what is called the Nile Valley, the 
long evergreen oasis bounded on both sides by 
extensive deserts, in order to proceed eastvi^ards 
to the desert tracts of the Egypto-Arabic mountain ranges on 
the coast. We have immediately in our eye that much- 
frequented caravan route, which, starting from some place in 
the Thebes district of Upper Egypt, intersects those moun- 
tains, following the course of their transverse valleys in an 
almost due easterly direction without any considerable 
ascent, and terminates in Koseir. In order to collect our 
energies for the exertions that await us, we enjoy a siesta 
under the overshadowing roof of acacias and sycamores in 
front of the caravanserai of the principal departure station, 
Bir Amber; once more we moisten our palate with the 
sweet soft water of the Nile; we make a preliminary repast 
on the gifts of the valley, milk, pigeons and fruit, and listen 
to the hundredfold twitter of the birds perching on the 
branches of the trees. The caravanserai is a building in 
the true modern Arabic style, not without taste, crowned 
with cupolas and possessing colonnades and chambers. 
Like the ordinary caravanserais, called wekalehs^ it belongs 
to no one, but was built by the celebrated old Ibrahim 
Pasha for the general benefit, especially for the pilgrims to 



332 EGYPT 

Mecca, who frequent this route so much. In winter it is 
sometimes used to sleep in ; but in summer people avoid its 
neglected and almost ruinous chambers on account of the 
serpents and lizards that take up their abode in them, and 
prefer to sleep in the open air. 

There is a great deal of stir and bustle in the front court. 
The famous ship of the desert, the one-humped camel, to 
which we have henceforth to trust ourselves entirely, is 
being prepared for its voyage. The caravan, consisting of 
from a dozen or two up to fifty or a hundred camels, at 
last gets seriously on the march. The drivers like to go in 
company, less for security, for in this desert there is nothing 
to fear, than for convenience and society. They help each 
other in loading and unloading, relieve each other in driving, 
and at other times mount. What one has not taken with 
him another perhaps has; the animals themselves are in 
better humor and spirits, and run better ; several strong good 
camels set the time in running, and none will remain be- 
hind. The drivers on this route are merely Fellahs of 
Upper Egypt or Ababdeh Bedouins, partly the owners of 
the animals themselves, partly mere servants or slaves. 
The march generally continues the whole day without a 
rest ; the stilted gait of the walking machine appears slow 
and sluggish — a pedestrian at a good walking pace easily 
gets far ahead of the caravan — but it is telling, uniform and 
continuous, and if a person lags behind for any reason he 
soon sees the caravan far ahead of him, and has hard 
work to overtake it. 



A RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT 333 

The fertile soil soon ceases, for it just reaches as far as 
the overflow of last harvest extended. Before us lies a 
widely-extended terrace land which rises almost impercep- 
tibly. Small undulating hills cross it transversely and lon- 
gitudinally. This region is apparently devoid of all organic 
life : wherever the eye turns there is nothing but hopeless 
gray. 

The soil on which we are marching is not loose sand, 
but very solid gravel and limestone. The path taken by 
our caravan is little inferior in firmness and solidity to a 
regularly constructed road. The steps of the camels have 
marked out many lines of ruts, each the breadth of a foot, 
which wind along it longitudinally, and between which are 
so many raised lines of loose and seldom-trodden ground. 
Camels prefer to move along the beaten track, and the 
firmness of the ruts increases with the amount of traffic. 
Nothing else is done to keep up the road. On this ad- 
vanced terrace the landscape offers little that is interesting. 
We at last become tired of riding, and take to walking for 
a stretch as a refreshing change. 

The caravans do not halt at midday, as unloading and 
loading give too much trouble to the drivers ; both man 
and beast must therefore make their breakfast last, till even- 
ing. Luncheon or a drink of water may be taken while 
sitting on camel-back on the march, accordingly the journey 
proceeds with little interruption till evening. 

We dismount, get our carpet and head-cushion spread 
on the soft, dry soil and lie down immediately with great 



334 EGYPT 

satisfaction. The carpet, or it may be only the soft sand 
of the camp, is to one who travels by the ship of the 
desert, like the land to the seasick traveller by sea. In 
this condition a drop of brandy is a very healthy medi- 
cine and quickly dispels all fatigue. Not less effective is a 
cup of tea or coffee, but this takes some time to prepare. 
If we have no servant, the driver readily attends to us, but 
as soon as he has made our couch ready, he leaves us to 
look after his beasts. Making them lie down, he removes 
their loads. They do not lie down of themselves, and if 
not attended to would prefer to run about with their loads 
in search of pasture. They are now fed. In the evening 
only a bag of beans is usually given them, while in the 
morning they are allowed to fill their bellies with chopped 
straw. They get water when any is to be had. In order 
to keep them from straying, one of their fore-legs is tied up, 
so that they can only move by hopping along. The don- 
keys have both their fore-legs tied together. It is only 
now that the driver thinks of us and himself. He is our 
guest and we his, for in the freedom of the desert there is 
no distinction of ranks, and Bedouin law prevails. The 
fire is either made with brushwood or with dried camel's 
dung. So soon as it is ablaze, coffee is made, and after- 
wards some simple dish is cooked, generally lentils, since 
Esau's time the favourite food of the desert, and with it we 
eat the biscuits we have brought with us, that is toasted or- 
dinary bread softened in water. If we think cooking is too 
roundabout a process, we content ourself with hard-boiled 



A RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT 33S 

eggs, dates, date-bread, cheese, or, still better, pigeons, 
fowls, or butcher-meat roasted at home. The drivers al- 
ways like to have something warm ; they take out of their 
sacks a wooden dish, each gives his contribution of flour, 
they knead a lump of simple unleavened dough, spread it 
over a gridiron, lay this above the glowing camel's dung, 
generally directly, but sometimes with an iron plate between, 
and cover it above with another plate. In this way is made 
the desert-cake^ the kurs^ the chief and favourite food of the 
drivers. These now take their meal in common, inviting 
everybody around, travellers and Bedouins, to share with 
them, and we too have to try the toothsome piece of pastry 
and pretend to like it. On the remains of the dung fire, 
we place once more the cofFee-pot, and cause the bitter 
Mocha to be served out to our hosts. 

Meanwhile it has become dark. The company light 
their pipes and chat away, sitting in the well-known favour- 
ite squatting position. When it is cold the groups draw 
more closely together and crouch around the oft-poked fire 
of dung. Everybody then lies down among his baggage on 
the sand, or on the ever-serviceable cotton-plush, which to- 
day has already been used as a plaid, a head-covering, a 
fodder cloth, a sack, and a basket, and now becomes a 
carpet or a coverlet. No one gives his personal safety a 
thought, the whole caravan scarcely possesses a single fire- 
arm. For in this desert, or at least in this part of it, there 
are no robbers nor murderers, not even thieves, unless be- 
longing to the company. 



336 EGYPT 

The coolness of the morning breeze arouses the sleepers. 
Packing is quickly finished and the camp broken up ; the 
morning camp, which to the camel-driver appears indis- 
pensable, will be held at the neighbouring water-station. 

The caravan leaders otherwise do not pay much attention 
to stations ; the caravan marches from morning to evening, 
and passes the night at whatever spot it may have arrived 
at about sunset ; human dwellings are even avoided on ac- 
count of the dogs. Water is drawn at the watering-places 
in passing, the skins are filled and the camels watered 
standing. The desert village Laketa, however, is not so 
lightly regarded as a station. There fowls, pigeons, sheep 
and goats are to be had, and also company besides the vil- 
lagers, as several caravans are always met with here, either 
resting from their journey or strengthening themselves for a 
fresh one ; fruits and vegetables may often be obtained from 
them. At the same time, on the return journey to the 
Nile Valley, when the main portion of the difficult road has 
been traversed, the traveller treats himself to a little good 
eating here, cooks for himself at least some pigeons, and 
the richer individuals make a present of a sheep to their 
company. 

We are again seated aloft on the camel-divan ; we see 
before us wide flat tracts, bounded by a transverse chain. 
One crown of hills after another bounds the horizon, a new 
one always succeeds, showing so near through the clear air, 
though in reality so far away. There too, at a distance of 
a quarter or half a league, lies a lake, there follows another 



A RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT 337 

and again another, a whole system of lakes, some of them 
even fringed with palms. But every one knows that they 
are mere illusions, the bahr es sheithan^ a kind of fata mor- 
gana^ in which the ground plays the part of the silvering of 
a mirror, and the strata of air immediately above it that of 
the reflecting glass. 

We are now somewhat more than twenty leagues from 
the Nile Valley. The country we have hitherto crossed has 
been a great, almost level terrace land, the soil being gravel 
or limestone. Sandstone now makes its appearance, and 
the hills and mountains come more closely together and be- 
gin to form the sides of valleys, while with these at last some 
vegetation appears, hitherto wholly absent. But soon dark, 
lofty, steep mountain masses bar the way. We can no 
longer march so straight onwards as before, a deep narrow 
valley winds through the hard rock which belongs to the 
primeval mountains. At the entrance to this valley, beside 
the caravan route, is a cistern, the well called Hamamat ; 
there were several such in the road, and a good many 
among the mountains. They are generally deep, built-up 
wells, from which the water is drawn up by leathern 
buckets, or a stair leads down to them, a structure of which 
a son of the country longing for coolness not infrequently 
makes use to descend to bathe in the cool basin below, 
from which others obtain their water for drinking and cook- 
ing. Along the whole road, but especially in this valley, 
antiquities belonging to the ancient Egyptian and Greek 
periods are seen. 



338 EGYPT 

Still these mountains are but a desert, and we strive to 
get out of them as soon as possible. We arrange with the 
leaders of the caravan to make a journey by night, and, 
having pitched our night camp at some suitable place, we 
break up about midnight and move along by the dark 
mountain heights. The camels go faster in the cool night 
air than by day, and the casual highway fodder, as yet in- 
visible, does not distract their thoughts. For hours we hear 
nothing but the gentle tread of the soft soles of our 
animals, and at times a " Hi ! " from the watchful driver, 
and a thwack of a cudgel on one of the donkeys which can- 
not follow the quicker night pace of the camels. 

The night march has helped our progress, and, by the 
time it is day, we have reached the littoral slope of the 
mountains. A fresh pure sea breeze blows from the north. 
The heart of the traveller, fatigued with his long journey 
through the desert, beats high, since his goal, the sea, must 
be near. 

From the bare hill terrace that spreads out before us, we 
perceive on the eastern horizon a bluish-black band which 
separates the earth from the clear blue vault of heaven. 
The camel accelerates his pace as we march down a valley 
of no great slope, that of the Ambagi. This opens out and 
at last we stand before a town, the seaport of Koseir, after 
traversing a stretch of forty-three leagues, to accomplish 
which the caravans require four or five days on the up- 
journey and three or four on the down-journey from the 
sea to the Nile Valley. 



THE CONVENT OF ST CATHERINE 

DEAN STANLEY 

IF the sanctity of Sinai ' was forgotten under the Jewish 
Dispensation, still more likely was it to be set aside 
under the Christian. But what its own associations 
could not win for it, its desert solitudes did. From the 
neighbouring shores of Egypt — the parent land of monasti- 
cism — the anchorites and cenobites were drawn by the sight 
of these wild mountains across the Red Sea; and beside the 
palm-groves of Feiran, and the springs of Gebel Mousa, 
were gathered a host of cells and convents. The whole 
range must have been to the Greek Church what Athos is 
now. No less than six thousand monks or hermits con- 

* The peninsula is a mountainous desert, arid and desolate, but with its 
own grandeur, and even fascination. It is inhabited by a number of 
Bedouins, who do a certain amount of rather primitive trading in gum- 
arabic, charcoal, and manna from the tamarisk trees. 

The real interest of the desert is its Biblical and Christian history. One 
may see Horeb, Sinai, and many another spot associated with the wander- 
ings of the Chosen People. A visit should be made to the great monas- 
tery of St. Catherine, founded by Justinian in A. D. 530. It is the home of 
many famous manuscripts — above all, the Sinaitic Codex of the Septuagint, 
which Tischendorf retrieved after three visits. The monastery is rich in 
relics and memorials of early saints — St. Helena, Joachim, Simon Stylites 
of the Pillar, and many another. It is one of the few remaining monu- 
ments of the dawn of Christianity. 

We will but hint at the ancient Church of the Transfiguration, its 
strange mosaics and medallions, and its great library, in which is the 



340 EGYPT 

gregated round Gebel Mousa ; and Paran must almost have 
deserved the name of a city when it was frequented by the 
Arabian pilgrims who wrote their names on the sandstone 
rocks of the Wady Mokatteb and the granite blocks of 
Serbal. Probably the tide of Syrian and Byzantine pilgrims 
chiefly turned to Gebel Mousa ; the African and Alexan- 
drian, to the nearer sanctuary of Feiran. Of all these 
memorials of ancient devotion, the great Convent of the 
Transfiguration, or, as it was afterwards called, of Saint 
Catherine, alone remains. It has been described by every 
traveller, and with the utmost detail by Burckhardt and by 
Robinson. But it is so singular of its kind, that a short 
summary of its aspect and recollections is essential to any 
account of the Peninsula of Sinai. 

Those who have seen the Grande Chartreuse in the Alps 
of Dauphiny know the shock produced by the sight of that 
vast edifice in the midst of its mountain desert, the one 
habitation of the upland wilderness of which it is the centre. 

Codex Aureus — twelve hundred years old, written in gold on vellum — the 
Psalter, and many another treasure of pious craftsmanship. 

Another feature of the Sinai Peninsula is its importance as a field for 
mining enterprise. There are records of its having been worked as far 
back as the third dynasty, and the mines bear inscriptions by many of the 
kings from the thirteenth to the twentieth dynasties. Little further is heard 
of the peninsula as a whole from 1200 B. c. to the second or third cen- 
turies of the Christian era. Turquoises, malachite, and copper were the 
chief treasures found. 

Sarbut-el-Khidem is the centre of that long-dead industry, close to 
Wadi-Nasb, where the mines were situated, and here are ruins of columns, 
and stelse with inscriptions. There was also a small temple dedicated to 
Hathor, Lady of Mafkat (or the Turquoise Land), and on its walls were 
records and reliefs. 



THE CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE 341 

It is this feeling, raised to its highest pitch, which is roused 
on finding in the heart of the desert of Sinai the stately 
Convent of St. Catherine, with its massive walls, its 
gorgeous church hung with banners, its galleries of chapels, 
of cells, and of guest chambers, its library of precious 
manuscripts, the sound of its rude cymbals calling to prayer, 
and changed by the echoes into music as it rolls through 
the desert valley, the double standard of the Lamb and the 
Cross floating high above its topmost towers. And this 
contrast is heightened still more by the fact that, unlike 
most monastic retreats, its inhabitants and its associations 
are not indigenous, but wholly foreign, to the soil where 
they have struck root. The monks of Sinai are not Arabs, 
but Greeks. There in the midst of the desert, the very 
focus of the pure Semitic race, the traveller hears once 
again the accents of the Greek tongue ; meets the natives of 
Thessalonica and of Samos ; sees in the gardens the pro- 
duce, not of the desert or of Egypt, but of the isles of 
Greece ; not the tamarisk, or the palm, or the acacia, but 
the olive, the almond tree, the apple tree, the poplar, and 
the cypress of Attica and Corcyra. And as their present 
state so their past origin is alike strange to its local habita- 
tion. No Arab or Egyptian or Syrian patriarch erected 
that massive pile; no pilgrim princess, no ascetic king: a 
Byzantine Emperor, the most worldly of his race, the great 
legislator Justinian, was its founder. The fame of his 
architectural magnificence had penetrated even to the 
hermits of Mount Sinai i and they, " when they heard that 



342 EGYPT 

he delighted to build churches and found convents, made a 
journey to him, and complained how the wandering sons of 
Ishmael were wont to attack them suddenly, eat up their 
provisions, desolate the place, enter the cells and carry ofF 
everything — how they also broke into the church and 
devoured even the holy wafers. To build for them as they 
desired a convent which should be to them for a stronghold, 
was a union of policy and religion which exactly suited the 
sagacious Emperor. Petra was just lost, and there was now 
no point of defense against the Arabian tribes on the whole 
route between Jerusalem and Memphis. Such a point 
might be furnished by the proposed fortress of Sinai j and 
as the old Pharonic and even Ptolemaic kings of Egypt had 
defended their frontier against the tribes of the Desert by 
fortified temples, so the Byzantine Emperor determined to 
secure a safe transit through the Desert by a fortified con- 
vent. A tower ascribed to Helena furnished the nucleus. 
It stood by the traditional sites of the well of Jethro and 
the Burning Bush, a retreat for the hermits when in former 
times they had been hard pressed by their Bedouin neigh- 
bours. It still remains, the residence of the archbishop of 
Sinai, if that term may be applied to an abode in which that 
great dignitary is never resident; the very gate through 
which he should enter having been walled up since 1722,10 
avoid the enormous outlay for the Arab tribes, who if it 
were open for his reception, have an inalienable right to be 
supported for six months at the expense of the Convent. 
Round about this tower, like a little town, extend in every 



THE CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE 343 

direction the buildings of the Convent, now indeed nearly 
deserted, but still by their number indicating the former 
greatness of the place, when each of the thirty-six chapels 
was devoted to the worship of a separate sect. Athwart 
the whole, stretches the long roof of the church ; within 
which, amidst the barbaric splendour of the Greek ritual, 
may be distinguished the lotus-capitals of the columns — 
probably the latest imitation of the old Egyptian architecture i 
and high in the apse behind the altar — too high and too 
obscure to recognize their features or lineaments distinctly 
— the two medallions of Justinian and Theodora, probably, 
with the exception of those in St. Vitalis, at Ravenna, the 
only existing likenesses of those two great and wicked 
sovereigns, than whom perhaps few could be named who 
had broken more completely every one of the laws which 
have given to Sinai its eternal sacredness. 

High beside the church towers another edifice, which 
introduces us to yet another link in the recollections of 
Sinai — another pilgrim, who, if indeed he ever passed 
through these valleys, ranks in importance with any who 
have visited the spot since Moses first led thither the 
flocks of Jethro. No one can now prove or disprove the 
tradition that Mahomet, whilst yet a camel-driver in 
Arabia, wandered to the great Convent, then not a century 
old. It is at least not impossible, and the repeated allusions 
in the Koran to the stone of Moses, evidently that now 
exhibited ; to the holy valley of Tuwa, a name now lost, 
but by which he seems to designate the present valley of 



344 EGYPT 

the convent ; and to the special addresses made to Moses 
on the western, and on the southern slopes of the moun- 
tain, almost bring it within the range of probability. His 
name certainly has been long preserved, either by the 
policy or the friendliness of the monks. Nowhere else 
probably in the Christian world is to be found such a 
cordial, it might also be said such a tender feeling towards 
the Arabian prophet and his followers, as in the precincts 
and the memorials of the Convent of Mount Sinai. " As 
he rested," so the story has with slight variations been told 
from age to age, " as he rested with his camels on Mount 
Menejia, an eagle was seen to spread its wings over his 
head, and the monks, struck by the augury of his future 
greatness, received him into their convent, and he in return, 
unable to write, stamped with ink on his hand the signature 
to a contract of protection, drawn up on the skin of a 
gazelle, and deposited in the archives of the convent." 
This contract, if ever it existed, has long since disap- 
peared ; it is said that it was taken by Sultan Selim to 
Constantinople, and exchanged for a copy, which, however, 
no traveller has ever seen. The traditions also of Mahomet 
in the Peninsula have evidently faded away. The stone 
which was pointed out to Laborde in 1828 as that on 
which Moses first, and the youthful camel-driver after- 
wards, had reposed, and to which the Bedouins of his day 
muttered their devotions, is now comparatively unknown. 
The footmark on the rock, whatever it is, invented or 
pointed out by the monks, as impressed by his dromedary 



THE CONVENT OF ST. CATHERINE 345 

or mule, according, as it is supposed to have been left in 
this early visit, or on his nocturnal flight from Mecca to 
Jerusalem — is now confounded by the Arabs with the im- 
press of the dromedary on which Moses rode up and down 
the long ascent to Gebel Mousa. But there still remains, 
though no longer used, the mosque on the top of the 
mountain, and that within the walls of the convent, in 
which the monks allowed the Mahometan devotees to pray 
side by side with Christian pilgrims ; founded according to 
the belief of the illiterate Mussulmans — in whose mind 
chronology and history have no existence — in the times 
of the Prophet, when Christians and Mussulmans were all 
one, and loved one another as brothers. 

As centuries have rolled on, even the Convent of Sinai 
has not escaped their influence. The many cells which 
formerly peopled the mountains have long been vacant. 
The episcopal city of Paran, perhaps in consequence of the 
rise of the foundation of Justinian, has perished almost 
without a history. The nunnery of St. Episteme has 
vanished ; the convent of the good physicians Cosmo and 
Damian, the hermitage of St. Onufrius, the convent of the 
Forty Martyrs — tinged with a certain interest from the 
famous churches of the same name, derived from them, in 
the Forum of Rome, on the Janiculan Hill, and on the 
Lateran — are all in ruins ; and the great fortress of St. 
Catherine probably owes its existence more to its massive 
walls than to any other single cause. Yet it is a thought 
of singular, one might add of melancholy interest, that 



346 EGYPT 

amidst all these revolutions, the Convent of Mount Sinai 
is still the one seat of European and of Christian civiliza- 
tion and worship, not only in the whole peninsula of Sinai, 
but in the whole country of Arabia. Still, or at least till 
within a very few years, it has retained a hold, if not on 
the reason or the affections, at least on the superstitions of 
the Bedouins, beyond what is exercised by any other in- 
fluence. Burckhardt, and after him, Robinson, relate 
with pathetic simplicity the deep conviction with which 
those wild children of the Desert believe that the monks 
command or withhold the rain from heaven, on which the 
whole sustenance of the Peninsula depends. 

It is not for us to judge the difficulties of their situation, 
the poverty and ignorance of the monks, the untameable 
barbarism of the Arabs. Yet looking from an external 
point of view at the singular advantages enjoyed by the 
convent, it is hard to recall another institution with such 
opportunities so signally wasted. It is a colony of Chris- 
tian pastors planted amongst heathens, and hardly a spark 
of civilization, or of Christianity, so far as history records, 
has been imparted to a single tribe or family in that wide 
wilderness. It is a colony of Greeks, of Europeans, of 
ecclesiastics, in one of the most interesting and the most 
sacred regions of the earth ; and hardly a fact, from the 
time of their first foundation to the present time, has been 
contributed by them to the geography, the theology, or the 
history of a country, which in all its aspects has been sub- 
mitted to their investigation for thirteen centuries. 



CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY' 



B. C. 



4400 1st Dynasty. Thinite. 

Menes, first king of Egypt. 

Uenephes (builder of Step Pyramid of Sakkara ?). 
4133 2d Dynasty. Memphite. 
3966 3d Dynasty. Memphite. 

Senoferu (builder of Pyramid of Meidoun). 
3733 4th Dynasty. Memphite. 

Khufu \_Cheop5\ (Great Pyramid of Gizeh). 

Khafra [Chephre?i\ (Second Pyramid of Gizeh). 

Menkera \_Mycerinus'] (Third Pyramid of Gizeh). 
3566 5th Dynasty. Elephantine. 

Ufias (Mastabal Fara'un ?). 
3300 6th Dynasty. Memphite. 
3100 7th, 8th, Memphite; 9th, loth, Heracleopolite [ist 

Dark Period]. 
2600 nth Dynasty. Thcban. 
2466 1 2th Dynasty. Theban. 

Osirtasen I. (Obelisk of Heliopolis). 

Amejiemhat III. (Labyrinth, Fayoum). 
2233 13th, Theban; 14th, Xoite ; 15 th, i6th, 17 th, Hyksos or 

Shepherd Kings [2nd Dark Period]. 
1700 18th Dynasty. Theban. 

Thothmes III. (Karnak). 

Amenoph III. (" Memnon "). 

Horus. 
1400 19th Dynasty. Theban. 

Sett I. (Abydus ; El-Kurneh, Tombs of the Kings, 
Thebes). 

Rameses II. the Great [Sesostris] (Abydus, Thebes, 
Abu-Simbel, etc.). 
1200 20th Dynasty. Theban. 

Rameses III. [Rhampsinitus] (Medinet-Habu, 
Tombs of the Kings, Thebes). 

1 The ancient dates are after Dr. Brugsch. Only the names of a few of 
the more prominent kings are given (in italics), with their most notable 
monuments (in parenthesis). 



348 EGYPT 

Iioo 2 1 St Tanite ; 22nd, Bubastite (Shishak) ; 23rd, Tanite ; 
24th, Saite; 25th, Ethiopian [3rd Dark Pe- 
riod]. 
666 26th Dynasty. Saite. 

Psamtik [Psammetichus] I. 
Neko (conqueror of Josiah of Judah). 
Aahnies (^Amasii). 
527 27th Dynasty. Persian. 
Cambyses. 
Darius Hystaspes. 
Xerxes (Visit of Herodotus). 
406 28th, Saite; 29th, Mendesian ; 30th, Sebennytic ; 31st, 

Persian. 
332 32nd Dynasty. Macedonian. 

Alexander the Great (Alexandria). 
305 33rd Dynasty. Ptolemaic. 

Ptolemy Soter, Philadelphus, Euergetes /,, etc., 
Auletes, Cleopatra. 
30 Roman Conquest by Octavius (Augustus). 

A. D. 

82 Domitian (Juvenal banished to Aswan). 
117 Hadrian (founds Antinoe). 
408 Theodosius II. (Cyril at Alexandria ; Hypatia). 
610 Heraclius, last emperor to possess Egypt. 
641 Arab Conquest by 'Amr (builder of El-Fustat). 
661 Lieutenants of Ommiade Khalifs of Damascus. 
751 Lieutenants of 'Abbasy Khalifs of Baghdad (at El 'Askar). 
868 Ahmad ibn Tulun founds Tuluny Dynasty (El-Katai'). 
905 Lieutenants of 'Abbasy Khalifs of Baghdad. 
955 Ikshidy Dynasty. 
969 Fatimy Dynasty. 

El-Mo'izz (Cairo built). 
El-Aztz (Azhar University). 
El-Hakim (Mosque). 

El-Mustansir (Walls and Gates of Cairo). 
1 171 Saladin founds Ayyuby Dynasty (Citadel of Cairo). 

El-Kamil defeats Jean de Brienne at El-Mansurah 

(1219). 
St. Louis captures Damietta, but is defeated and 
taken prisoner (1249). 
1250 Eybek founds Dynasty of Bahry or Turkish Memluks. 
Beybars. 



CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 349 

Kalaun (Mosque and Maristan). 

Khaltl (Khan El-Khalily). 

Eti-Nasir (Mosque). 

Sultan Hassan (Mosque). 
1382 Barkuk founds Dynasty of Burgy, or Circassian Memluks 
(Mosque and Tomb-Mosque). 

El-Muayyad (Mosque). 

Kait-bey (Mosque in Eastern Cemetery). 

Kansuh El-Ghory (Mosques). 
1 51 7 Turkish Conquest (Egypt governed by Pashas). 

'Aly Bey, 1 763-1 772. 
1798 French Occupation. Battle of the Pyramids (July 21). 

Battle of the Nile (August i). 
1 801 English Expedition. Battle of Alexandria (March 13). 
1805 I. Mohammad 'Aly founds his Dynasty. 

(Massacre of Memluks, 181 1. 

Wahhaby Wars, 1811-1824. 

War with the Porte, 1 831-1833. 

Syria acquired by treaty, 1833. 

Syria receded by Convention, 1 841. 

Imbecility, 1848. Death, 1849). 
1848 II. Ibrahim Pasha, 
1848 III. 'Abbas Pasha. 

1854 I^- Sa'id Pasha (Suez Canal and National Debt begun). 
1863 V. Ismail Khedive (Public works of every kind ; corre- 
sponding debt of eighty millions ; change in suc- 
cession, title, and powers. Deposed, 1879). 
1879 VI. Mohammed Tewfik Khedive (Under Dual Protec- 
torate of England and France). 
1892 VII. Abbas Hilmi. 




STATISTICS 

E. S. 

Y country is no longer in Africa ; we now form 
part of Europe," the Khedive Ismail, grand- 
father of the present Khedive, remarked, when 
his great dream of creating an African Empire freed from 
the yoke of Turkey and stretching from the Mediterranean 
to the Equator was finally over. 

Egypt was made part of the Turkish Empire in the latter 
part of the Twelfth Century and its history became inter- 
woven with that of Europe when Napoleon took his army 
there in 1801. Then came the British, who tried to re- 
store Egypt to the Sultan of Turkey in 1803. Finally, 
when Great Britain abandoned the question the two Turk- 
ish parties — the Albanians and the Ghuzz — struggled for 
command, the Albanians were victorious under Mehemet 
Ali. He, in 181 1, obtained supreme power, and ruled the 
country, agreeing, however, to pay an annual tribute to the 
Porte of ^682,092. His successors were Ibrahim (1848) ; 
Abbas (1848-1854); Said (1854-1863), whose reign was 
marked by the Suez Canal concession; and Ismail (1863- 
1879), who, by a firman of the Sultan (May 14, 1867), was 
granted the title of Khedir Misr, or Ruler of Egypt (instead 
of Vali or Governor). On Ismail's misgovernment and 




THE KHEDIVE 



STATISTICS 351 

financial embarrassment, France and Great Britain inter- 
vened and forced him to abdicate, appointing his son, 
Mohammed Tewfik (1879-1892), to succeed him. A mili- 
tary revolt occurred in 1882, headed by an officer of the 
Egyptian Army, Arabi Pasha. The French government 
declined to cooperate, and a British expedition reestablished 
the authority of the Khedive. The Dual Control was 
abolished in 1883. Meanwhile occurred the revolt, in the 
southern provinces, led by Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed of 
Dongola, *' the Mahdi," or prophet. General Gordon was 
sent to Khartoum (1884) as governor-general of the 
Soudan, and fell at Khartoum in 1885. In 1883 the 
Khedive created a Legislative Council of thirty members 
and a General Assembly. 

The Khedive Mohammed Tewfik died in 1892 and was 
succeeded by his elder son. Abbas Hilmi, the present ruler. 

" On the fatal road which was leading him to ruin 
Ismail was unable to stop, and the hour came when on the 
demand of France and England, who represented the prin- 
cipal creditors, the Sultan, his Sovereign, deposed him, and, 
with tears in his eyes, he entered into exile. First he took 
refuge at Naples, in the Palace of La Favorita, which the 
King of Italy had placed at his disposal, whilst later he 
retired definitely to Constantinople. 

" His son, Tewfik Pasha, who succeeded him, died 
before him, when the present ruler mounted the throne, 
almost a stranger to his grandfather. It was a touching scene 
when, one day, the young Sovereign and the ancient exile met- 



352 EGYPT 

" When the Khedivial yacht which carried Abbas Flilmi 
cast anchor before Constantinople, a superb boat, urged 
forward by many stout oarsmen, advanced rapidly, whilst 
in the stern, trembling with emotion, the ancient Khedive 
sat. He had come to embrace his grandson, the living 
representative of his country ; for if there was one thing 
which Ismail loved even more than himself, it was the land 
where he had been born — Egypt, which, in his dreams, he 
had seen grow great and powerful. So, when he felt the 
end drawing near, he had but one desire, one thought, to 
die on the banks of the wondrous Nile, where he had 
known joy and sorrow, triumph and humiliation. 

" He wrote to his grandson, asking humbly for a corner 
in his native land, a corner, distant and solitary, where he 
could render up his soul to God. Abbas Hilmi would 
willingly have consented ; but, from high political reasons, 
the request was refused by England." * 

Abbas Hilmi, born July 14, 1874, the son of Mohammed 
Tewfik, who succeeded to the throne on the death of his 
father in 1892, is the seventh ruler of the dynasty of Me- 
hemet Ali, that is to say he is the seventh Viceroy and 
third Khedive. At the time of his father's death, he was 
studying at the Theresianum Academy in Vienna. He 
married Princess Ikbal Hanem and has four daughters and 
two sons. The heir-apparent is Prince Mohammed Abdul 
Mouneim (born February 20, 1899). 

The principal residences of the Khedive are the Palace 
1 A. B. De Guerville. 



STATISTICS 353 

d' Abdine at Cairo, where the official receptions take place ; 
the Palace of Koubbeh in the country about six miles from 
Cairo ; the Palace of Alexandria ; and the Palace of Monta- 
zah on the seashore a few miles from Alexandria. In 
taking a visitor around Koubbeh in 1906, the Khedive re- 
marked : " You will no doubt have noticed that my family 
has no old castles, no old palaces, with the exception of the 
official one at Cairo, and it is impossible for me to speak 
of the home of my ancestors. Custom decrees that the 
Palaces inhabited by them and always in the country, 
shall at their deaths be destroyed. This property is the 
only one which has been more or less inhabited since 
the time of Ibrahim Pasha, but it was then only a small 
building. I myself had this huge Palace erected, and 
all the outbuildings which I am about to show you." 

From 1879 to 1883 Egypt was under the dual control of 
France and Great Britain, but since the last named year 
Great Britain has practically governed Egypt. Its control 
was recognized by France in the Anglo-French Agreement 
(April 8, 1904). Egypt is nominally dependent upon 
Turkey and the administration is carried on by native 
ministers subject to the Khedive's ruling. The Egyptian 
Ministry is composed of six members who are as follows : 
I. President of the Council and Minister of the Interior, 
Mohamed Said Bey ; II. Foreign Affairs, Hussein Rushdi 
Pasha ; III. Justice, Saad Pasha Zagloul ; IV. Education, 
Sir Joseph Saba Pasha ; V. Public Works and War, 
Ismail Sirri Pasha j VI. Public Instruction, Ahmed Hich- 



354 EGYPT 

met Pasha. General Commanding Army of Occupation, 
Sir J. G. Maxwell, K. C. B., C. V. O., C. M. G., D. S. O. 
Sirdar of Egyptian Army and Governor of the Soudan, 
General Sir Reginald Wingate, K. C. B., K. C. M. G. 
A British agent in Cairo has a seat in the Council of Min- 
isters. The General Assembly consists of the Ministry, 
the Legislative Council and forty-six members popu- 
larly elected. The Legislative Council consists of thirty 
members. 

Egypt Proper is divided into five governorships {mohafzas) 
of principal towns and fourteen provinces {mudirias) sub- 
divided into districts. 

Egypt is divided into two great districts : Upper Egypt 
and Lower Egypt. The total area of Egypt Proper, in- 
cluding the Oases in the Libyan Desert, the region between 
the Nile and the Red Sea and El-Arish in Syria is about 
400,000 square miles ; but the cultivated and settled area 
— the Nile Valley and the Delta — comprises only 12,013 
square miles. 

The chief religion is that of Islam and the Moslems 
number over 9,000,000. Of the 730,000 Christians, 
608,000 of them are Copts, with the Patriarch of Alex- 
andria at their head. 

According to the census of 1907 in an area of 400,000 
square miles the population consisted of 11,206,359. 
There were about 147,000 foreigners — 63,000 Greeks, 
35,000 Italians, 21,000 British and 15,000 French. Cairo 
contained 654,000 j Alexandria, 370,000 j and Port Said, 



STATISTICS 355 

49,884. There were 10,366,826 Moslems j 706,322 
Copts ; and 38,635 Jews j while Christians were divided 
as follows: Roman Catholics, 57,744; Protestants, 12,- 
736 ; Greek Orthodox, 76,953 ; 27,937 Eastern Chris- 
tians ; and 206 others. 

The judicial system is complex and there are courts of 
religious law for Mohammedans. The highest religious 
and judicial authorities among the Moslems are the Sheikh- 
ul-Islam appointed by the Khedive and chosen from the 
learned class of Ulema, and the Grand Cadi nominated 
by the Sultan. The great seat of learning is the Mosque 
and University of El-Azhar at Cairo founded in 972 of the 
Christian Era. In 1908 it had 329 professors and 9,940 
students. Scattered through the country there have existed 
a number of indigenous schools called Kuttabs, and of late 
years the Ministry of Education has endeavoured to bring 
these under a systematic government. Altogether in Egypt 
in 1908 there were 4,319 Kuttabs with 6,795 professors 
and 175,515 students. 

The principal products are cotton, sugar and cereals. 
Two-thirds of the population are engaged in agriculture. 
There are 1,412 miles of State railways and 780 miles of light 
agricultural railways owned by companies. The famous 
Suez Canal, opened on November 17, 1869, is eighty-one 
miles long : sixty-six miles are actual canal and there are 
twenty-one lakes. 

On September 19, 1882, the whole Egyptian army was 
disbanded by order of the Khedive, and in the following 



356 EGYPT 

December, the organization of a new army was given to a 
British officer on whom was bestowed the title of Sirdar. 
The army numbers : cavalry, 789 ; camel corps, 629 ; 
Arab battalions, 206 i artillery, 1,258 ; and infantry, 10,- 
280. There are about 150,000 young men on the rolls for 
conscription. The peace strength is about 9,000 officers 
and men. The cavalry is drawn from the fellaheen of the 
Delta. The arm is the Martini-Henry. The horse-bat- 
tery consists of Syrian horses and light Krupp guns. The 
field-batteries have Krupp mountain guns carried by mules 
and a second line of camels. The fellah soldier has been 
compared to a bicycle which, although incapable of stand- 
ing up alone, is very useful while under the control of a 
skillful master. Since 1882 a British army of occupation 
has remained in Egypt. It now totals 6,265 officers and 
men, and comprises one cavalry regiment ; one horse bat- 
tery ; one garrison company ; one company Royal Engi- 
neers ; four infantry battalions ; and the 3d battalion 
Coldstream Guards. In 1910-1911 the Egyptian Govern- 
ment contributed ;^i 50,000 towards the maintenance of 
the British troops in Egypt. 

The details for the administration of the Soudan were 
signed by the British and Egyptian Governments on Jan- 
uary 19, 1899. The supreme military and civil command 
is vested in a Governor-General appointed by the Khedive 
with the consent of the British. There are thirteen prov- 
inces in the Soudan, each under a Governor, who is a 
British officer of the Egyptian Army. Egyptian officers 



STATISTICS 357 

rule over the districts into which the provinces are divided. 
Darfur is left under the rule of its Sultan. 

There are training colleges for teachers in Khartoum 
(Gordon Memorial College was opened in 1902), Om- 
durman, Suakin and Rufaa. The area is 950,00 square 
miles with 2,000,000 population, including 3,104 Europeans. 
The population of Khartoum is 14,823, and Omdurman, 
41,592. A railway runs from Cairo to Khartoum. 




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